



























































































































































































Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 

v r z 












TALL TALES 

from 

TEXAS 


By Mody C. Boatright 

/> 

Illustrated by 

Elizabeth E. Keefer 

Foreword by 
J. Frank Dobie 



The Southwest Press 
Publishers in and of the Southwest 
DALLAS, TEXAS 






Copyright 1934 
SOUTH-WEST PRESS, 



©CIA 74613 ^ 

AUii a iij'4 - 


o 






. . To . . 


MY FATHER 



Table of Contents 


Page 

Preface—J. Frank Dobie.vii 

Introduction. xix 

Pizenous Windies. 1 

Speed.18 

Birds and Beasts.28 

Wind and Weather.40 

By the Breadth of a Hair.53 

The Genesis of Pecos Bill.68 

Adventures of Pecos Bill.80 

The Exodus of Pecos Bill.95 



v 













List of Illustrations 


“I feels somethin’ tappin’ me on the leg” ... 12 

“Jist as he pulls the trigger, he runs to beat hell” . 23 

“Purty soon the whiffle-pooffle gits interested and 
pricks up his ears”.33 

“Jist as I teched the crown a feller yelled out” . 47 

“Well, sir, them birds jist naturally lifted me right 

out of that sink hole”.63 

“A settin’ on that tornado and a-spurrin’ it in the 
withers”.85 

“That gal come ridin’ down the Rio Grande on a 

catfish”.93 


vi 





A PREFACE ON AUTHENTIC LIARS 


An authentic liar knows what he is lying about, 
knows that his listeners—unless they are tenderfeet, 
greenhorns—know also, and hence makes no pretense 
of fooling either himself or them. At his best he is as 
grave as a historian of the Roman Empire; yet what 
he is after is neither credulity nor the establishment of 
truth. He does not take himself too seriously, but he 
does regard himself as an artist and yearns for recog¬ 
nition of his art. He may lie with satiric intent; he 
may lie merely to make the time pass pleasantly; he 
may lie in order to take the wind out of some egotistic 
fellow of his own tribe or to take in some greener; 
again, without any purpose at all and directed only by 
his ebullient and companion-loving nature, he may 
“stretch the blanket” merely because, like the redoubt¬ 
able Tom Ochiltree, he had “rather lie on credit than 
tell truth for cash.” His generous nature revolts at the 
monotony of everyday facts and overflows with desire 
to make his company joyful. 

Certainly the telling of “windies” flourished in the 
Old World long before America was discovered; 
nevertheless the tall tale both in subject matter and in 
manner of telling has been peculiar to the frontiers 
of America, whether in the backwoods of the Old 
South, in the mining camps of the Far West, amid 
the logging camps presided over by Paul Bunyan, or 
on the range lands stretching from the Gulf of Mexico 
to the Canadian line. Very likely the Pilgrim Fathers 
did not indulge much in the art of yarning, and the 
stately Cavaliers pretty much left that sort of enter¬ 
tainment to the poor—“poor but honest”—settlers. As 
to whether the “decay in the art of lying” that Oscar 

vii 


viii A Preface on Authentic Liars 

Wilde observed in literary fiction has blighted that 
to be heard around camp fires and on the galleries of 
ranch houses, we need not here inquire. The “big uns” 
that Mody Boatright has gathered together in this book 
are not altogether out of the past. 

They express a way that range folk talked and they 
express also a way in which these folk cartooned 
objects familiar to them like rattlesnakes, sand storms, 
jack rabbits, the expanding and contracting powers of 
rawhide, the suddenness of Texas northers, “killings” 
according to a code that clearly distinguished a killing 
from a murder, and other things. They are, in short, 
authentic both as to the characters represented and the 
subjects discoursed upon. 

When in the old days two cow outfits met upon 
the range, and there was “ample time,” as Andy Adams 
would say, they sometimes arranged what was known 
as an “auguring match.” Each outfit would pit its 
prime yarn-spinner against the other and there followed 
a contest not only of invention but of endurance. John 
Palliser in The Solitary Hunter; or, Sporting Adven¬ 
tures of the Prairies (London, 1856) relates how after 
an all-night talking contest between a Missourian and 
a Kentuckian, the umpire “at a quarter past five” found 
the Kentucky man fast asleep, his opponent “sitting 
up close beside him and whispering in his ear.” What 
the contestants talked about, Palliser does not say, 
but there is ample testimony to prove that the “augur¬ 
ing matches” on the range had as precedent among the 
backwoodsmen of the South who were to push out 
upon the ranges a kind of round table talk in which 
each talker sought to cap the tall tales of his fellow 
with one a little taller. 

For genuine artists a solitary opponent is sufficient; 
art is substantive. In Piney Woods Tavern; or, Sam 


A Preface on Authentic Liars 


ix 


Slick in Texas (Philadelphia, 1858), by Samuel A. 
Hammett, the narrator in traveling from the Brazos to 
the Trinity rivers found the San Jacinto “a roarin’ and 
a hummin’ it ... Free soil movements was a-goin’ on, 
and trees a-tumblin’ in all along the banks.” 

I see thar war no help for it [the narrator goes on]. 
So I took my feet outen the stirrups, threw my saddle¬ 
bags over my shoulder, and in me and the mar went. 

We war in a awful tight place for a time, but we 
soon landed safe. I’d jest got my critter tied out, and 
a fire started to dry myself with when I see a chap 
come ridin’ up the hill on a smart chunk of a pony. . . . 

“Hoopee! stranger”—sings out my beauty—“How 
d’ye? Kept your fireworks dry, eh? How in thunder 
did ye get over?” 

“Oh!” says I, “mighty easy. Ye see, stranger, I’m 
powerful on a pirogue; so I waited till I see a big log 
a-driftin’ nigh the shore, when I fastened to it, set my 
critter a-straddle on it, got into the saddle, paddled 
over with my saddle-bags, and steered with the mare’s 
tail.” 

“Ye didn’t, though, by Ned!” says he, “did ye?” 

“Mighty apt to”—says I—“but arter ye’ve sucked 
all that in and got yer breath agin, let’s know how 
you crossed?” 

“Oh!” says he, settin’ his pig’s eyes on me, “I’ve 
been a-riding all day with a consarned ager, and orful 
dry, and afeard to drink at the prairie water holes; so 
when I got to the river I jest went in fer a big drink, 
swallered half a mile of water, and come over dry 
shod.” 

“Stranger,” says I, “ye’r just one huckleberry above 
my persimmon. Light and take some red-eye. I thought 
ye looked green, but I were barkin’ up the wrong 
tree.” 

Story-telling in Texas was so popular that at times 
it interfered with religion. The pioneer Baptist 


X 


A Preface on Authentic Liars 


preacher, Z. N. Morrell, relates in his autobiographic 
Flowers and Fruits in the Wilderness (Dallas, 1886) 
that on one occasion while he was preaching in a log 
cabin in East Texas his sermon was drowned by the 
voices of men outside “telling anecdotes.” After an 
ineffectual reprimand, the preacher finally told his 
interrupters that if they would give him a chance he 
would tell an anecdote and that then, if it was not 
better than any of theirs, he would “take down his 
sign and listen to them.” They agreed to the challenge. 
The anecdote he proceeded to relate about Sam 
Houston and the battle of San Jacinto won him the 
right to keep on talking without interruption. The 
triumph was but a repetition of David Crockett’s 
election to Congress through his b’ar stories. 

An anecdote is not by any means necessarily a 
windy, but people who cultivate the art of oral nar¬ 
ration will sooner or later indulge in exaggerative 
invention. Some candidate for the Ph.D. degree should 
write a thesis on the interrelationship of the anecdote, 
the tall tale, and the short story in America. What is 
probably the most widely known story that the nation 
has produced, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of 
Calaveras County,” is all three—and it is mostly just 
a yarn in which the frontier character, Jim Smiley, 
character being the essence of good anecdote, is more 
important than the frog. 

Sixty years or so ago at Covey’s college for ranch 
boys, located at Concrete, Texas, near Cuero, the 
“scholars” organized a liar’s club. According to the 
rules of the club every boy present at a session must 
tell a story. The teller of what was adjudged the best 
yarn was habitually awarded as a prize a dozen hot 
tamales cooked by one of the Mexican women about 
the premises. 


A Preface on Authentic Liars 


xi 


One night a certain lad of few words who had been 
drawn into the club was called upon to contribute. 

“Wall,” he drawled, “I was raised away out in the 
bresh up whur I never heared nobody talk, and I jes’ 
ain’t got no story to tell.” 

“Oh, go on and tell something,” the other club 
members urged. 

“No,” the diffident youth remonstrated, “it ain’t no 
use fer me to try to make up anything. I .jest can’t 
do it. I’ve been a-trying to figger up something while 
you all was telling your stories, and the pump won’t 
even prime.” 

There was more urging and encouraging. But still 
the boy from up the creek hung back. As a member 
of the club, however, he simply had to tell something— 
or “take the leggins.” Finally the leader of the group 
suggested, “I guess we can let you off from lying if 
you’re so much like George Washington. Just go ahead 
and tell us about some interesting happening. It don’t 
have to be a lie.” 

“Wall,” the drawly tongue started off, “I’ll tell you 
about something that happened to me. One morning 
I was a-leaving the ranch to look out for wormy calves. 
I was going to be gone all day, and jest as I thro wed 
my leg over the saddle, a Meskin girl that lived with 
her people in a jacal close to the corral came a-running 
out. ‘Here,’ says she, ‘we’ve jest been making tamales 
out of the cow that got her leg broke yesterday and 
you all had to kill. The meat is fat and the corn is new, 
and the tamales are muy sabroso. You must take some 
of them with you.’ 

“Now I would do nearly anything this little Meskin 
girl suggested. So I told her all right, to wrop the 
tamales up in some paper and a flour sack and I’d put 
’em in my morral with the hank of dried beef and the 
bottle of worm medicine. Which she did. Tamales ain’t 


xii A Preface on Authentic Liars 

much good unless they are hot, you know, and I 
figgered the wropping would keep these warm. 

“Well, after I’d gone about six miles, I struck a bull 
that I decided to rope. Which I did. The bull he kept 
on going after he hit the end of the rope and my 
horse he could not stop him. He dragged me about 
forty miles more or less, I guess, before I hung up in 
a mesquite tree with my chin between the forks of 
a limb. I don’t know how long I hung there, but it was 
some time. People differ as to how long it was. 
Anyway, it was until the limb rotted down and 
I dropped to the ground. 

“I didn’t want to go back to the ranch afoot, and 
so I hit out foilering the horse’s tracks. I found him 
a good piece out looking purty gant but still saddled 
and the rope that had rotted off the bull’s neck still 
tied to the horn of the saddle. I went right up to the 
morral, for it was still on the saddle, and untied it. 
I was a little gant myself. Then I felt of the sacking 
around the tamales, and I couldn’t feel no heat. Says 
I to myself, T bet that Meskin girl didn’t wrop ’em 
right and the danged things have got so cold they 
won’t be no count to eat.’ But I went on and unwropped 
the paper, and when I got to the shucks, danged if 
they didn’t burn my fingers. Them tamales shore 
tasted good after all that bull running and then hoofing 
it after the horse. It is remarkable the way tamales hold 
the heat when they are well wropped.” 

Even the schools for ranch boys in Texas included 
“windjamming” among their activities. But many 
a frontiersman who had not had the advantage of an 
education must have been forced by circumstances to 
“make it strong” in telling about the Wild West 
to gentle Easterners. Every new land has marvels; 
hence “traveler’s tales.” When facts are taken for 
fabrications, then the narrator is tempted to “cut 


A Preface on Authentic Liars xiii 

loose” sure enough. One of the most honest-hearted 
and reliable frontiersmen that ever boiled coffee over 
mesquite coals was Bigfoot Wallace. He came to Texas 
from Virginia long before barbed wire “played hell” 
with the longhorns. After he had himself become a 
regular Longhorn he went back to his old home for 
a visit. As John C. Duval in the delightful Adventures 
of Bigfoot Wallace (1870) has the old frontiersman 
describe his reception, he was egged on in the following 
manner to take the bridle off and let out the last kink. 

A few weeks after my arrival I went to a fandango 
that was given for my special benefit. There was a 
great crowd there, and everybody was anxious to see 
the “Wild Texan,” as they called me. I was the lion 
of the evening, particularly for the young ladies, who 
never tired of asking me questions about Mexico, 
Texas, the Indians, prairies, etc. I at first answered 
truthfully all the questions they asked me; but when 
I found they evidently doubted some of the stories I 
told them which were facts, then I branched out and 
gave them some whoppers. These they swallowed 
down without gagging. For instance, one young wom¬ 
an wanted to know how many wild horses I had ever 
seen in a drove. I told her perhaps thirty or forty 
thousand. 

“Oh, now! Mr. Wallace,” said she, “don't try to 
make game of me in that way. Forty thousand horses 
in one drove! Well, I declare you are a second Mun¬ 
chausen I” 1 

“Well, then,” said I, “maybe you won’t believe me 


1 Forty thousand, even thirty thousand, mustangs are a lot of mustangs. 
In The Young Explorers, a book privately printed in Austin, Texas, about 
1892, Duval, pp. 111-112, defends this extraordinary assertion. The wild 
horses were encountered between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. 
Corroborative of the enormous numbers to be found in that region is the 
testimony of William A. McClintock, "Journal of a Trip Through Texas 
and Northern Mexico," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. XXXIV, 
pp. 232-233. Bigfoot Wallace was not lying about the wild horses. 



XIV 


A Preface on Authentic Liars 


when I tell you there is a sort of spider in Texas as 
big as a peck measure, the bite of which can only be 
cured by music/’ 

“Oh, yes,” she answered, “I believe that’s all so, 
for I have read about them in a book.” 

“Among other whoppers, I told her there was a 
varmint in Texas called the Santa Fe, that was still 
worse than the tarantula, for the best brass band in 
the country couldn’t cure their sting; that the creature 
had a hundred legs and a sting on every one of them, 
besides two large stings in its forked tail, and fangs as 
big as a rattlesnake’s. When they sting you with their 
legs alone, you might possibly live an hour; when 
with all their stings, perhaps fifteen or twenty min¬ 
utes; but when they sting and bite you at the same 
time, you first turn blue, then yellow, and then a 
beautiful bottle-green, when your hair all falls out, 
and your finger nails drop off, and in five minutes you 
are as dead as a door nail, in spite of all the doctors in 
America.” 

“Oh! My! Mr. Wallace!” said she. “How have you 
managed to live so long in that horrible country?” 

“Why, you see,” said I, “with my tarantula boots 
made of alligator skin, and my centipede hunting- 
shirt made of tanned rattlesnake hides, I have escaped 
pretty well; but these don’t protect you against 
the stinging scorpions, cow-killers, and scaly-back 
chinches, that crawl about at night when you are 
asleep! The only way to keep them at a distance is 
to chaw tobacco and drink whiskey, and that is the 
reason the Temperance Society never flourished much 
in Texas.” 

“Oh!” said she, “what a horrible country that must 
be, where the people have to be stung to death, or else 
chaw tobacco and drink whiskey! I don’t know which 
is the worst.” 

“Well,” said I, “the people out there don’t seem to 
mind it much; they get used to it after a while. In 
fact, they seem rather to like it, for they chaw tobacco 


A Preface on Authentic Liars 


xv 


and drink whiskey even in the winter time, when the 
cow-killers and stinging lizards are all frozen up!” 

What gusto, what warmth of natural sympathy, 
what genial expansion! Here the authentic liar has 
been translated by circumstances and by his own genius 
into the pure aura of truth. There is no distortion, no 
“wrenching the true cause the wrong way,” no base 
intent to win by arousing false fears or to defraud 
through false hopes. The artist has but arranged the 
objects of his scene and then handed the spectator 
a magnifying glass that is flawlessly translucent. The 
magnified vision, like that of Tartarin of Tarascon, 
seems but the effect of a sunlight transilluminating all 
other sunlights—the sunlight of Tartarin’s Midi 
country, “the only liar in the Midi.” Only here it is the 
sunlight of the West, which brings mountain ranges 
a hundred miles away within apparent touching 
distance and through its mirages makes antelopes stalk 
as tall as giraffes, gives to buffalo bulls far out on the 
prairies the proportions of hay wagons, and reveals 
spired cities and tree-shadowed lakes reposing in 
deserts actually so devoid of life that not even a single 
blade of green grass can there be found. 

Occasionally one of these authentic liars of the West 
falls a prey to his own lying. Frank Root (The Over¬ 
land Stage to California) relates that one time after 
a Gargantuan story-teller named Ranger Jones had 
finished narrating a particularly blood-curdling “per¬ 
sonal experience,” a stage driver who happened to be 
among the listeners looked him squarely in the eye and 
said, “I hope, Ranger Jones, that you don’t expect me 
to believe this story.” 

‘‘Well—er—no—really, I don’t,” the narrator an¬ 
swered. “The fact is, I have lied out here in this West¬ 
ern country so long and have been in the habit of telling 


XVI 


A Preface on Authentic Liars 


so many damned lies, the truth of it is now that I don’t 
know when I can believe myself.” In Trails Plowed 
Under Charles M. Russell has a delicious chapter on 
“Some Liars of the Old West.” 

“These men weren’t vicious liars,” he comments. “It 
was love of romance, lack of reading matter, and the 
wish to be entertainin’ that makes ’em stretch facts and 
invent yarns.” Among the most famous of these liars 
was a man known as Lyin’ Jack, and his favorite tale 
was on an elk he once killed that had a spread of 
antlers fifteen feet wide. He always kept these, as he 
told the story, in the loft of his cabin. 

One time after a long absence Lyin’ Jack showed 
up in Benton. “The boys” were all glad to see him 
and, after a round or two of drinks, asked him for 
a yarn. 

“No, boys,” said Jack, “I’m through. For years 
I’ve been tellin’ these lies—told ’em so often I got to 
believin’ ’em myself. That story of mine about the 
elk with the fifteen-foot horns is what cured me. I told 
about that elk so often that I knowed the place I killed 
it. One night I lit a candle and crawled up in the loft 
to view the horns—an’ I’m damned if they weren’t 
there.” 

In a book of not enough consequence to warrant the 
naming of its title, the author, writing through hearsay 
and attempting to be veracious, describes the Texas 
norther—which comes “sudden and soon in the dead 
of night or the blaze of noon”—as being so swift in 
descent, so terrible in force, and so bitterly cold that 
“no old Texan would trust himself out on the prairies 
in July or August with the thermometer at ninety-six 
degrees, without two blankets strapped at the saddle¬ 
bow to keep him from freezing to death should a 
norther blow up.” Of course no man of the range 
carries his blankets on the horn of a saddle and no 


A Preface on Authentic Liars 


xvi i 


Texan ever experienced a genuine norther in July or 
August. The description is utterly false, utterly lacking 
in authenticity. On the other hand, when “Mr. Fish- 
back of the Sulphurs” relates how one hot day in 
December when he was riding home he saw a blue 
norther coming behind him, put spurs to his horse, and, 
racing for miles with the nose of the wind at his very 
backbone, arrived at the stable to find the hind-quarters 
of his horse frozen stiff whereas the fore-quarters were 
in a lather of sweat—such a hair’s breadth doth divide 
the hot prelude to a norther from the iciness of the 
norther itself—we realize that we are in the company 
of a liar as authentic as he is accomplished. Surely 
such do not violate the ninth commandment; indeed 
they have become as little children. 

—J. Frank Dobie, 

Austin, Texas, 

Cinco de Mayo, 1934, 
















INTRODUCTION 


The pioneers who came to Texas to found a cattle 
industry that eventually extended from the Rio Grande 
to the Big Bow brought with them from the older 
Southwestern frontier a large body of floating litera¬ 
ture of the tall tale variety. The influence of this folk 
material is clearly discernible in the works of Long- 
street, and Baldwin, and other Southern humorists 
who preceded Mark Twain. 

The literary use of the tall tale in the South seems 
to have been checked by the Civil War, but after that 
struggle it found a congenial home and flourished 
orally in the cow-camps of the new Southwest. While 
it is true that the cowboy deserves his reputation for 
reticence and reserve, it is also true that when condi¬ 
tions were favorable to the exercise of the art of story 
telling, he often proved an inveterate liar. Among the 
cattlemen of a generation ago books and periodicals 
were scarce, and all sorts of shifts were resorted to for 
amusement. It is a tribute to the cowboy’s adaptability 
that he was able to utilize as well as he did the resources 
at his command. So, while the gifted story-teller was 
often referred to disparagingly as a “windy,” he was 
welcome around the camp-fires, and any large outfit 
was likely to have one or more among its numbers. 

Old tales that were applicable to the new conditions 
survived; others were adapted to the new environment; 
Crevecoeur and Munchausen seem to have supplied 

xix 


XX 


Introduction 


others, though of course there is no proof that the 
Southwestern analogues were not of independent 
origin. The adaptations, if they were such, often 
exhibit admirable ingenuity. Still other tales grew 
directly out of the soil. 

The cowboy liked horseplay, and took keen delight 
in “loading” the greenhorn. This pastime, which usually 
occupied the hours after supper in the evening, con¬ 
sisted in telling for the benefit of the uninitiated a 
species of yarn locally known as the “windy.” If the 
auditor appeared credulous, the narrators went on 
vying with each other, heaping exaggeration upon 
exaggeration, consciously burlesquing the misconcep¬ 
tions which the newcomer had brought with him from 
the East. Sometimes the listener was informed by a 
sell at the end of the story that he had been taken in; 
more often he was made aware of the fact by the 
sheer heights of exaggeration to which the narrative 
ascended; occasionally he accepted the story in good 
faith and went away neither sadder nor wiser. The 
good story-teller, then, did not demand credence. All 
he wanted was a sympathetic listener. His reward was 
the joy of mere narrative. 

The result was a literature at once imaginative, 
robust, and humorous: one in striking contrast to the 
better known pensive and melancholy ballads, which, 
taken in themselves, present a one-sided picture of the 
cowboy’s character. 

Since much of the cowboy’s romancing was done to 
inspire fear in the newcomer, the fauna of the South¬ 
west, really comparatively harmless, was represented 


Introduction 


XXI 


as dangerous in the extreme. And among the living 
things none was better adapted to the cowboy’s purpose 
than the rattlesnake. As a matter of fact, there were 
few fatalities from snake-bite among cowmen. The 
rattlesnake rarely strikes without warning. He presents 
no danger to mounted men; and when dismounted, the 
cowboy was afforded good protection by his boots. Yet 
because of his terrifying aspect, his blood-curdling 
rattle, and the reputation he had acquired in the East, 
the rattlesnake was an especial source of terror to the 
greenhorn; and he was the subject of many a harrow¬ 
ing tale told around the campfire, frequently as a pre¬ 
lude to some practical joke. This means of entertain¬ 
ment was a well established custom in the days of 
Big Foot Wallace. 

If the existing fauna could not be made impressive 
enough, imaginary animals could be drafted into serv¬ 
ice. These mythological creatures were numerous, and 
were not completely standardized either in terminology 
or in anatomy. Some were harmless, and the point of 
the story was to “sell” the greenhorn. Others were 
extremely ferocious, and the tenderfoot was advised 
to avoid them under all circumstances. He also received 
minute instruction in the technique of escaping when 
pursued. Like all mythological animals, they were 
compounded of the parts of well-known species. 

The greenhorn’s misconceptions and his conduct 
arising therefrom were frequent themes of western 
windies, as well as of tales of actual fact. 

Another favorite subject of cowboy yarns was the 
weather. The changeableness of atmospheric conditions 


xxii Introduction 

in the Southwest has long been proverbial, and many 
a fantastic yarn has been spun to illustrate this fickle¬ 
ness of weather. 

A different type of tall tale was that involving nar¬ 
row and ingenious escapes and hair-raising adventures. 
This sort of tale demanded a hero, but the cowboy’s 
love of exaggeration did not lead him into super¬ 
naturalism. The hero of his fiction was a mere mortal 
who possessed to a high degree endurance, agility, and 
the other qualities which the cowboy of necessity 
exemplified, and which he consequently admired. The 
hero of the cowboy’s tall tale could drink his coffee 
boiling hot and wipe his mouth on a prickly-pear. He 
could ride a tornado, but he was not a giant, the impact 
of whose body in being thrown from one would form 
the Great Basin of the West; and those who have 
attributed to him such a prodigious stature have 
written too much under the influence of the Paul 
Bunyan legend. 

Nor did cowboy fiction ever become unified around 
a single character. When a hero was needed, his name 
might be invented on the spot; the feats of daring 
might be ascribed to some local character; or the 
narrator himself might appropriate the honors. Certain 
names, however, were in rather general use, California 
Joe and Texas Jack being among the more common. 

The nearest living parallel to Don Quixote (in out¬ 
ward circumstances at least) that I ever saw was an 
impersonator of one of these legendary heroes. 

Several years ago a man came to Sweetwater, Texas, 
and announced that he was the original Texas Jack. 


Introduction xxiii 

He wore khaki trousers tucked in “hand-me-down” 
boots somewhat run over at the heels. He had on a red 
flannel shirt and bandanna. What drew attention for 
at least a block was an elaborate belt with holster at¬ 
tached. The belt was four inches wide, and had evi¬ 
dently been fashioned from a “back-band” belonging to 
a set of heavy draft harness. It was heavily studded 
with brass and glistened in the sun. The holster, when 
examined by officers, showed no evidence of ever hav¬ 
ing contained a pistol. 

Texas Jack seemed quite harmless. He walked the 
streets for a few days and entertained whoever would 
listen to him with long stories about his exploits in 
arresting bad men, a type which he said was very 
numerous in the Panhandle of Texas. It seemed that 
when the Rangers were at a loss what to do, they sent 
for Texas Jack, who always brought back his man and 
turned him over to the law. His technique was quite 
simple. He merely walked in and got the bad man by 
the ear and led him to jail while the nonplussed officers 
looked on in astonishment. 

I later saw him at Maryneal, a village twenty miles 
south of Sweetwater. There he had an antiquated 
singleshot, twenty-two calibre rifle, which he handled 
so carelessly that he was arrested. I never learned the 
outcome of his sanity trial. 

I never saw anybody claiming to be California Joe 
or Pecos Bill. 

This latter hero is apparently a late development, for 
few of the old-time cowmen have heard of him. Getting 
into print in 1923 , he seems to be driving his rivals 


XXIV 


Introduction 


from the field, and is the most likely candidate for epic 
honors in the Southwest. 

Practically all the tales in this collection came directly 
from the cattle folk of West Texas, among whom I was 
raised (not reared); and some of them are associated 
with my earliest memories. Others I have learned more 
recently either from cattlemen or from their sons and 
daughters who have been my students in the University 
of Texas and in the Sul Ross State Teachers College. 

I have consulted the available published material on 
the tall tale of the cattle country. The bibliography is 
short, and not all of the authors who have written 
on the subject have had the advantage of a first-hand 
acquaintance with the yarns of the region. Aside from 
the publications of the Texas Folklore Society, my 
chief indebtedness is to Mr. Edward O’Reilly’s “Saga 
of Pecos Bill,” published in the Century Magazine for 
October, 1923 (106: 827-833). 

Some of this material I have published in the 
Southwest Review, the Texas Monthly, The South 
Atlantic Quarterly, and the Publications of the West 
Texas Historical and Scientific Society. 

Mody C. Boatright. 


PIZENOUS WINDIES 


There was just enough light left in the sky to reveal 
the bedded herd. The first night-shift had gone on. One 
could see the riders silhouetted against the sky as they 
rode around the cattle quieting them with the crooning 
melodies of Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie and The 
Trail of ’83. 

The men had finished supper. Some had spread their 
beds and were lying upon them. They had not yet gone 
through the short ritual of going to bed. Others sat 
around the campfire. Red Wallace observed that it was 
time to hit the hay. As he started to the wagon for his 
bed-roll, he stumbled over a small greasewood bush. 
A shrill rattle came from underneath. Red jumped 
back, picking up a stone. 

“You dirty rascal!” he exclaimed. “Thought you’d 
bite me, didn’t you? Of all the nerve. Try in’ to bite me. 
You cheeky son-of-a-gun. Wanted to bite me! Take 
that.” The rock struck the snake squarely on the head. 

“A rattlesnake!” exclaimed Lanky, a tenderfoot of 
the high-school age, whom the boss had taken on the 
day before, and whom Joe Martin had informally 
christened Lanky. “I’ve been wishing all afternoon to 
see one.” 

“You’ll git to see all them you want to see if you 
stay with this outfit, though they ain’t as numerous as 
they used to be,” answered Red. 


1 


2 


Tall Tales from Texas 


“Are they really as poisonous as they have the 
reputation of being ?” asked Lanky. 

“Pizenous?” asked Red, seating himself on the bed¬ 
roll he had just brought from the wagon. “One of 
them cut-throats took off three of the best friends 
I ever had in this world. 

“You see it was like this. Poker Bill was out ridin’ 
fence. He gits down to nail up a loose wire, and one 
of these reptiles nabs him by the heel. Bill grabs him 
by the tail and jist naturally flails the everlastin’ stuffin’ 
out of him on the fence post. Then Bill takes off his 
boot and looks at his heel. The fang ain’t teched the 
skin; so he puts back on his boot and goes on his way, 
thinkin’ nothin’ of it. About a week afterwards Bill 
gits a sore heel. He comes in one day at dinner and 
tells the boss he can’t work that evenin’, and he lays 
down on his bunk and we goes off and leaves him. 
When we comes in at night, there lays pore Bill a 
corpse. 

“He must have knowed he was goin’ to die, ’cause 
there on a piece of paper was his will all wrote out. 
It says, ‘My saddle to Red, my bridle to Pete, and my 
boots to Ed.’ 

“Well, we buries pore Bill, havin’ a swell funeral 
with a circuit-rider to do the preachin’. Ed, out of 
respect to the deceased, wears the boots to the funeral. 
Purty soon he gits a sore heel. ‘Bill’s boots,’ he says, 
‘are a little too big. They made a blister on my heel.’ 
One mornin’ he takes to his bunk, sayin’ he guessed 
his sock had pizened his heel. That night he breathes 


PlZENOUS WlNDIES 


3 


his last. Fine man he was, too. They don’t make better 
men than Ed Wilson. 

“Jist before he dies, he calls us all to his bedside 
and says, ‘Boys, I’m goin’ to the big round-up. I ain’t 
been as righteous as I ought to of been, but I’m hopin’ 
the Big Range Boss will cut me into his herd. Dave, 
you can have my bridle; Red, you can take my saddle; 
and Pete, you can have my boots.’ Them was the last 
words he ever spoke. 

“Ed’s family asks us to send the corpse back to Vir¬ 
ginia, which we does, me going along with it. And 
I meets Ed’s family and tells them what a fine man 
he was, and how he always done his duty, and ever’- 
thing. And fine folks they was, too. 

“When I gits back to the ranch, I finds pore Pete 
all laid out for the undertaker. ‘He died of the sore 
heel,’ says the boss, ‘jist like Bill and Ed. He says 
give his boots to you.’ 

“By this time I was gittin’ suspicious. I takes the 
boots and examines them close, and there in the spur- 
piece of the left boot is the fang of that dirty, low- 
down, cut-throat reptile. I takes the pliers and pulls 
out the fang, and to make shore it don’t cause any 
more devilment, I takes a spade and buries it at the 
back of the bunk-house. 

“Then I puts on the boots and wears them right on. 
This is them I got on now. See that place right there 
that looks like a pinhole? That’s where I pulled the 
critter’s fang out.” 

“I guess it didn’t do any more harm,” said Lanky. 

“None to speak of,” replied Red. “The boss’s old 


4 


Tall Tales from Texas 


hound dawg comes along and sees where I buried the 
fang, and he forgits but what he’d buried a bone there, 
and he begins diggin’ like a fool. Purty soon his paw 
swells up, and we have to shoot him. But as far as I 
know that was the end and the extent of that reptile’s 
devilment.” 

“Well, well,” said Hank. “That puts me in mind 
of a thing that happened to Jess Simpson and me jest 
before I joined this outfit. We was goin’ to a rodeo 
at Vega in Jess’s flivver, and jest before we gits to 
Lubbock, we sees a rattlesnake in the road ahead of us. 
‘Watch me git him,’ says Jess, and jest as the critter 
raises his head to strike, Jess busts him one right in 
the mouth with the front tire of his Ford. ‘One less 
venomous reptile in the world,’ says Jess, and we 
drives on thinkin’ that’s all of that. 

“Jest as we gits to Lubbock, Jess notices that a tire 
is nearly down. He pulls up to a little garage in the edge 
of town and has it fixed, and then we goes on. When 
we gits to Plainview, we notices that the tire is nearly 
flat again; so he has it fixed there. Then we goes on 
to the rodeo, and Jess wins a hundred dollars bull- 
doggin’, and me seventy-five goat-ropin’, which we 
spends and starts home. 

“We gits back to Plainview and stops at the same 
garage where we had our tire fixed cornin’ up, and we 
notices a new man changin’ tires. ‘Where’s the feller 
that was here last week?’ says Jess. ‘He was so good 
to us and fixed our tire so good I thought I’d bring 
him a little snake medicine,’ says Jess, sort of winkin’. 


PlZENOUS WlNDIES 


5 


“ ‘Pore feller. We buried him yesterday/ says the 
man. ‘His hand all swole up and he died/ 

“ ‘Now ain’t that too bad/ says Jess. ‘Fine man he 
was. I never seen him till we stopped here last week 
on our way to Vega, but soon as I looked him in the 
eye, I says to my pal here (meanin’ me), ‘There’s a 
fine feller. I’m sort of funny that way,’ he says. ‘When 
I first see a man, I can look him in the eye and tell 
whether he’s any ’count or not/ 

“ ‘Tell his family that two of his true friends lament 
his death,’ I says. ‘I reckon we better be gittin’ on.' 

“We drives on wonderin’ if that dirty reptile did 
cause the pore feller’s death. ‘We’ll stop at Lubbock,’ 
says Jess, ‘and see if the feller there is all right.’ And 
so we drives up to the little garage, which is a one-man 
outfit, and there was a woman runnin’ it. 

“ ‘Where is the man that was here last week?’ says I. 

“ ‘Oh, my husband?’ says the woman. ‘We laid him 
away last Tuesday/ tears cornin’ in her eyes as she 
spoke. 

“ ‘I’m a pore cowpuncher,’ say I, ‘and I spent all my 
money at the rodeo, but I’ll write you a draft on the 
boss for a month’s wages, and it’ll be honored too, you 
needn’t be worried about that.’ 

“ ‘I’ll do the same,’ says Jess. 

“ ‘You gentlemen are very kind,’ she says, ‘but I 
couldn’t accept it. Besides, our home and business is 
paid for, and there’s the insurance money.’ 

“ ‘How did it happen?’ asks Jess. 

“ ‘I guess it was blood-pizen/ she says. ‘His finger 


6 


Tall Tales from Texas 


swelled up, and he got sicker and sicker and died. Are 
you all friends of his?* 

“ ‘That we are,’ says Jess, ‘and I want to say right 
here that there never was a better man than—than 
your husband/ 

“ ‘Naw, there wasn’t,’ says I, ‘and we wish you good 
luck. We’ll have to be gittin’ away.’ 

“We drives off overcome with sorrow on account 
of the death of them two men. Sometimes yet when 
I’m ridin’ along by myself, I think of them in their 
graves, and I feel that me and Jess somehow had a 
hand in it, and I’d jest give my hoss and saddle if it 
hadn’t happened. Naw, sir, Lanky. If you see one of 
them critters in the road, don’t run over him. You 
might be the innocent means of takin’ off several 
lives.” 

The fire had died to a bed of coals. It was no longer 
possible to see the night herders, but the indistinct 
songs reached the camp. Lanky was seated on his bed¬ 
roll. The sitters had dwindled to four. 

“I didn’t know they were that bad,” observed Lanky. 

“That bad!” said Joe Martin. Joe was a veteran of 
the open range and of the overland trail. Far and near 
he was known by the name of “Windy Joe,” but 
Lanky had not learned of this last fact. 

“That bad!” said Joe again. “Them snakes that 
Red and Hank told you about must of been baby 
snakes. They couldn’t of been real, he-men, venomous 
reptiles like the one that killed Ike Morgan. Ike was 
one of the best friends I ever had in this world. He 


PlZENOUS WlNDIES 


7 


worked on the Yellow House when Red and Hank 
here was wearin’ foldin’ britches. 

“Ike was some cowhand, even if he did have a 
wooden leg. I reckon I might as well tell you how he 
got his wooden leg, while I’m about it. You see it was 
like this. Ike was ridin’ the range one winter day, and 
as he started up a little canyon, his hoss fell and caught 
Ike’s leg. The critter broke two of his own legs in the 
fall, and there he was on Ike’s leg and couldn’t git up. 
And there was pore Ike wonderin’ if he’d starve before 
anybody found him. 

“Purty soon Ike smelled a norther, and the next thing 
he knowed, the norther was there, and the next thing 
he knowed after that, he had icicles on his nose. Ike 
knowed he’d freeze to death, and that muy pronto if he 
didn’t find some way to git loose. He figgered and 
figgered. That was one thing about Ike, he always 
used his head. Well, he figgered and figgered, and 
purty soon he looked around, and he seen an axe about 
a hundred yards off. He ’lowed some nester had been 
haulin’ wood out of the canyon and had lost his axe. 
And mighty glad Ike was of the nester’s hard luck, too. 
And jest to show you the nerve of the man, he goes 
over and gits the axe and chops off his own leg, and 
he didn’t have any chloroform, either, it not bein’ 
wormy season, and gits his self loose and walks ten 
miles into headquarters. That’s what I call nerve. 

“But what I started out to tell you was how Ike 
met his death. The boss sent Ike to town and had the 
blacksmith make him a peg-leg. A fine limb it was, too. 
Ike had him a stirrup made to fit it, and he could ride 


8 


Tall Tales from Texas 


as good as ever. Many a bronc he peeled after that. 
He could dance like a fool, and hold his own in any 
shootin’ match that any tough hombre ever started. 
Shame it was that he had to be kilt by a dirty reptile. 

“Ike was fixin’ fence in the canyon one evenin’ jest 
at dusk. He needs a stay for the fence, and he looks 
over in the bushes and sees what in the dusk of the 
evenin’ looks like a pole. He gits down to pick it up, 
and damn me, if it wasn’t one of them low-down 
reptiles—a big specimen with twenty-eight rattles and 
a button. And the son-of-a-gun nabs Ike by the wooden 
leg. That don’t worry Ike much, and while the critter 
holds him by the peg, Ike takes out his six-shooter and 
sends the gentleman on to his happy huntin’ ground, 
cuttin’ off the twenty-eight rattles and the button for 
a keepsake—which I now have and will show you some 
time if you’ll make me think of it. 

“Ike gits on his hoss and rides to the bunkhouse 
where me and Ezra Jenkins are, and when he tries to 
lift his wooden leg out of the stirrup, it won’t come. 
Ezra and me gits the axe and the cold-chisel and cuts 
off the stirrup from around the peg and brings Ike 
in the house. By that time the leg is as big as a steer, 
and it is all we can do to carry him in. Ezra gits his 
fencing hatchet and me the choppin’ axe, and we begins 
to try to reduce Ike’s leg to its natural and proper size. 
We trims and we trims, and the leg swells and swells. 
And the more we trims, the more it swells. However, 
for the first ten hours we gains on the swellin’, but we 
begins to tire and there’s nobody to spell us. I takes 
the axe and keeps Ezra busy packing out the chips and 


PlZENOUS WlNDIES 


9 


splinters. We works all night choppin’ and trimmin , and 
packing out, but we gits weaker and weaker, and the 
swellin’ keeps gainin’ on us. Finally, after three days, 
we jest naturally gives tetotally out, and has to set 
down and see pore Ike die.” 

“But,” said Lanky, “a bite on the wooden leg 
shouldn’t have given him any pain. How did it kill 
him?” 

“Well, you see it was like this,” replied Joe. “His 
leg jest swelled and swelled till it got so big it jest 
naturally smothered him to death. Fine feller he was 
too, one of the best friends I ever had in this world.” 

“There was jest one good thing about it,” added Joe. 
“Ezra and me had enough kindling wood to do us all 
winter.” 

Joe chunked up the fire and put on the coffee pot. 

“Have a cigarette?” offered Lanky. 

“Roll my own,” said Joe, fishing out a shuck. 

It was Hank’s turn. “Too bad about Ike,” he said. 
“But I don’t doubt a-tall it’s so, like you say, fer I seen 
a similar case. Very similar case, except it wasn’t a 
man’s leg. 

“Me and Jim Arbury hitched up the hosses one 
mornin’ and went out to bring in a little stove-wood. 
He headed out towards a little mesquite thicket, and 
jest before we got to it, I seen the lead hoss shy. 

“ ‘What’s the matter with old Pete?’ I asks Jim. 

“ ‘What’s the matter with him?’ Jim says. ‘My God, 
man,’ says he, ‘look at that reptile! big as a fence post!’ 

“And shore nuff there’s a great big rattler a-holt 


10 Tall Tales from Texas 

of the wagon tongue. He'd nabbed it, and he wouldn’t 
let go. 

“Jim knowed exactly what to do. He jumped down 
and pulled out the couplin’ pin, lettin’ the double-tree 
go, and drove the team out of the way. ‘Grab the axe,’ 
he says. Well, I jumped out with the axe and begun 
work. I shore hated to do it, but I knowed it had to be 
done. I had to chop off the wagon tongue, and be damn 
quick about it too, to save the wagon.” 

“Them tales of yours and Joe’s jist made me think 
how lucky Jack Pierson and me was not to be kilt one 
time,” said Red. 

“The boss sends us out in the winter time to fence 
a section starve-out. We puts up the posts on three sides 
and then we finds that the boss hasn’t figgered right, 
’cause there ain’t none fer the other side. We starts to 
the canyon, thinkin’ we’d have to cut some and snake 
’em out. We gits to the rim-rock, and there we sees 
what looks like a lot of cedar logs. We remarks on our 
good luck and wonders how the timber got there, but 
when we drives up close, we finds a bunch of big hiber¬ 
natin’ reptiles. There was ten thousand, I guess. 

“ ‘Cuss the luck,’ says Jack; ‘I thought we’d found 
our posts.’ 

“ ‘We have,’ says I; ‘and why ain’t we? Them crit¬ 
ters are big enough and stiff enough. We’ll take ’em 
along.’ 

“ ‘You’re the doctor,’ says Jack. 

“Well, we gathers up the biggest and the straighest 
and loads ’em in. We find we don’t have to dig post- 
holes. I’d stand one of the critters on his tail, and Jack 


PlZENOUS WlNDIES 


11 


would drive him in the ground with a twelve-pound 
sledge-hammer. We stapled on the wire, and told the 
boss to come out and inspect the job. 

“ ‘Boys/ he says, ‘you do have a brain, leastways 
one between you. You saved at least a week’s work. 
I'll let you go to Kansas City when we ship again.’ ” 

“Was the fence permanent?” asked Lanky. 

“It was till spring,” said Red. “You see, when 
spring come, them reptiles jist naturally thawed out and 
come to, and crawled off with a whole mile of wire. 
Good six-wire fence we had made, too—hog-tight, 
horse-high, and bull-strong.” 

“Is it true,” asked Lanky, “that rattlesnakes and 
king snakes are natural enemies and fight each other?” 

“I don’t know about that,” said Joe, “but I’ll tell 
what I seen once. Strange thing it was too. I come upon 
a king snake and a rattlesnake one time fightin’ for 
dear life. Each one would grab the other and then stick 
his head under his belly for protection. Finally, jest 
at the same time, they nabbed each other by the tail 
and begun swallering. There they was, jest like a ring; 
and they swallered and swallered, and the ring got 
littler and littler. Jest then I heard a panther yell, and 
I looked up jest a minute—jest a fraction—and when 
I looked again, damn me, if them snakes wasn’t gone. 
I looked for ’em I reckon an hour, and it was right out 
on the open prairie where there wasn’t any holes or 
rocks, and I never could find them critters.” 

“Now, most rattlers,” said Red, “is jist like bad 
men. They’re jist naturally mean and will bite you 
when you ain’t lookin’, no matter how kind you are 


12 


Tall Tales from Texas 



“I feels somethin' tappin 3 me on the leg . 33 































PlZENOUS WlNDIES 


13 


to them. You’ll find one onct in a while, however, 
that’s a purty decent sort of chap. I recollect one in 
particular which was a gentlemanly critter.” 

“You’re the first man I ever heard speak a good 
word for a rattlesnake,” said Lanky. 

“I couldn’t make no complaint about the conduct and 
behavior of this particular rattlesnake,” said Red. “He 
treated me decent enough.” 

“What did he do?” asked Lanky. 

“Well,” said Red, “I was fishin’ one time out on the 
Pecos, and I run out of bait. What I wanted was 
a frog, and I looked and looked, for nearly an hour 
and couldn’t find none. Finally I seen a rattlesnake 
tryin’ to swaller a big bullfrog. I thinks to myself, 
‘Well, I’m goin’ to have that frog, even if I git snake- 
bit.’ You see I had a bottle of snake medicine in my 
pocket—Old Rock and Rye it was. 

“I put my foot on that rattlesnake’s tail and took a 
holt of that frog’s hind legs, and jist naturally extracted 
him right out of the reptile’s mouth. Well, instead of 
gittin’ ringy and showin’ fight, like most rattlers 
would, this here snake jist looks so sad and down in 
the mouth that I couldn’t help feelin’ sorry for the 
critter. 

“‘Here, old feller; cheer up,’ says I, givin’ him a 
swig of Old Rock and Rye out of my bottle. He takes 
a dram and crawls off jist as pert as a fresh cuttin’ hoss. 

“I puts the frog on my hook and sets down to fish. 
Jist as I was about to git a bite, I feels somethin’ 
tappin’ me on the leg. I looks down, and damn me, 


14 Tall Tales front Texas 

if there ain’t that rattlesnake back with two frogs in 
his mouth.” 

Hank stirred up the coals and put on a mesquite 
grub. Lanky gave him his cue by asking if rattlesnakes 
ever got in people’s beds. 

“Occasionally,” said Hank. “Occasionally, though 
they ain’t as thick as they used to be. One time I woke 
up in the night, thinkin’ it was about time for me to 
stand guard. I felt something cold on my chest. I 
knowed what it was. I says to myself, 'Now, Hank, 
keep cool. Keep cool.’ All the time I was easin’ my 
hand back around to the top of my head to git a-holt 
of my six-gun. I was as careful as I could be, but 
I reckon the critter got on to what I was doin’, for jest 
as I was about to touch the gun, he raised up his head 
and opened his mouth to strike. Then I let him have a 
bullet right in the mouth. That was the quickest draw 
I ever made.” 

“I got in a fix jest like that one time,” said Joe, 
“except, fool like, I didn’t have my gun handy.” 

“What did you do?” asked Lanky. 

“Well,” said Joe, “after thinkin’ it over and seein’ 
there wasn’t nothin’ I could do, I jest shet my eyes 
and went back to sleep, and when I woke up in the 
morning, the critter was gone. Jest crawled off of his 
own free will and accord.” 

“Well,” said Red, “that shows what a tenderfoot 
you was, and Hank, too. If you’d jist of put hair rope 
around your bed before you went to sleep, them snakes 
wouldn’t of come in.” 


PlZENOUS WlNDIES 


15 


“I had read that in stories,” said Lanky, “but I 
didn’t know if it were really true.” 

“True as the gospel,” said Red. 

“How does it work?” asked Lanky. 

“Tickles their bellies,” replied Red. “A rattlesnake 
jist can’t stand ticklin.* One fall when we was workin’, 
the cook one night didn’t make camp till dark. Then 
we found out he had bedded us in a regular den of 
reptiles. We made our beds right up techin’ each other, 
and put hair ropes on the ground all around the whole 
outfit. The next mornin’ we counted a hundred and 
twenty-nine rattlesnakes around the beds. They had jist 
naturally tickled their fool selves to death tryin’ to 
crawl over the rope.” 

“The critters, however, ain’t so numerous as they 
used to be in Pecos Bill’s time,” said Joe. “That man 
almost put ’em out of business in his day.” 

“How did he do that?” asked Lanky. 

“Bill was a very smart and ingenious lad,” said Joe. 
“He was the first man to capture a whiffle-poofle; he 
was the first man to train prairie-dogs to dig post- 
holes; and he was the first man to do a lot of things. 
Among other things he invented a way to slay rattle¬ 
snakes wholesale. When Bill wanted to capture or 
exterminate any sort of reptile or bird or beast, he 
would study the critter’s habits and find out what his 
weakness was; then he would go off and study and 
study, and purty soon he would come back with a way 
all figgered out. Bill always used his head. He put in two 
of the best years of his life studyin’ rattlesnakes. Not 
that Bill was afraid of ’em. But one of the critters bit 


16 


Tall Tales from Texas 


his horse one time, and then he got mad. But he never 
let on. He jest went out and made friends with ’em 
and lived with ’em, and noticed their habits and their 
diet and where they liked to live at different times of 
the year, and all that. 

“Bill discovered that rattlesnakes had rather have 
moth-balls to eat than anything under the sun. A rattle¬ 
snake will leave a young and tender rabbit any day for 
a moth-ball. Bill found out likewise that a rattlesnake 
jest can’t stand chili powder. Those two clues give him 
an idear. First he took some chili powder and soaked 
it in nitroglycerin. He rolled this into little pills and 
coated them with moth-ball. 

“Then he took these balls and scattered ’em around 
where the reptiles stayed. Well, the critters would come 
out and find the moth-balls and swaller ’em right down, 
not thinkin’ there might be a ketch somewheres. Purty 
soon the outside coating would melt off, and the chili 
powder would burn the critters on the inside. This 
would make ’em mad, and they’d beat their tails against 
the ground and rocks, which exploded the nitroglycerin 
and blowed ’em into smithereens. We used to kill ’em 
that way here on the ranch, but the boss made us quit 
after one of the critters crawled under a steer and 
blowed him into atoms.” 

“I’d think that would be a rather dangerous method,” 
said Lanky. “But what is that whifflle-poofle you men¬ 
tioned a few minutes ago?” 

“Oh, you’ll learn when you git a little older,” replied 
Joe. “You’d better hit the hay now, Lanky. You stand 
next guard.” 


PlZENOUS WlNDIES 


17 


Lanky bent down to untie his bed-roll. Then he 
jumped straight into the air. “My God, I’m bitten!” 
he yelled. 

“Bring the butcher knife and the coal-oil,” said 
Hank, “and heat a brandin’ iron.” 

“Spect we ought to cut his hand off right now before 
the pizen spreads,” said Red. “Where’s the axe?” 

“Now, lad, don’t let ’em buffalo you,” said Joe. “You 
ain’t bit a-tall.” 

“But there’s blood on my hand,” said Lanky; “see.” 

“That’s a shore sign you ain’t bit,” said Joe. “That’s 
the snake’s blood; see. That’s the very snake Red kilt.” 

“But he struck me,” said Lanky. 

“Shore he did. Them devilish critters will strike 
after they have their heads cut off. Reflex. That’s what 
they call it. Dirty trick they played on you.” 

“Well, well,” said Red. “The critter’s head is gone. 
Still I think we better cut his hand off to make shore. 
Them things is so pizenous the bite might kill him any¬ 
way. I seen a man bit jist like that one time . . .” 

“And he never was right in his head again,” said 
Hank. 

“Which one of you was it?” asked Lanky. 


SPEED 


On Lanky’s second night in the cow camp, there 
were many allusions to his snake-bite. 

“Now, Lanky, watch out for rattlesnakes and don’t 
git bit again,” said Hank. 

“I hope you’ll recover without an operation,” said 
Red, “but still I think we ought to of cut your hand 
off. No tellin’ what might happen. Ought to be on the 
safe side.” 

“Don’t let ’em buffalo you, Lanky; don’t let ’em 
buffalo you,” said Joe. “You ain’t such a greenhorn as 
lots of chaps I’ve seen. Why, when Red here first come 
to this outfit, he was so ign’rant he didn’t know split 
beans from coffee. He thought you had to have a gun 
to shoot craps; he thought a dogie was somethin’ you 
built houses out of. He thought a lasso was a girl, and 
remuda a kind of grass. When the boss got ringy, 
Red said he was a wrangler. Why, he even thought 
a cowboy was a bull.” 

“He was nearly as bad as old Borrego Mason’s 
sheep-herder,” said Hank. “I reckon Joe’s told you 
about him, ain’t he, Lanky?—No? 

“Well, a guy comes down from the East and tries 
to git a job runnin’ cattle. He ‘lowed he’s jest graduated 
from college—Harvard or Yale, or some of them big 
schools up there. Said he’d been a big athlete and 
played in all sorts of games and run in big foot races, 
and the like. ’Lowed he come to Texas to be a big 
18 


Speed 


19 


rancher. He said, though, he’d be willin’ to begin at the 
bottom and work his way up, and for the time bein’ 
he’d take a job as a common cowhand. 

“Well, he went to all the outfits in the whole coun¬ 
try, and he couldn’t git anybody to take him on.’’ 

“Why not?” asked Lanky. 

“Well, it was mostly on account of his lingo. He 
wouldn’t talk United States, like other people. He 
wouldn’t ask for a job. He was wantin’ a ‘position’ or 
‘employment,’ with a ‘future’ to it. And he wouldn’t 
say ‘wages’, but always asked about ‘remuneration’ and 
‘emolument’ and the like. Some of the bosses didn’t 
know what the hell he was talkin’ about; some of ’em 
said he must be a rustler; and others said they wouldn’t 
hire a damn foreigner until he learned to talk United 
States, or at least Mex’can. 

“And so the pore feller had to hire himself to a 
damn sheep man. It nearly broke his heart. It makes 
me sorry for the pore fool every time I think of it. 

“And when Old Man Mason took him down to the 
sheep pens and turned out the borregos, and the pore 
greenhorn seen he was goin’ to have to walk, he jest 
naturally broke down and cried. He told Old Man 
Mason that his sweetheart back East had jest died and 
that he’d come out West to git over it. 

“Old Man Mason told him the first thing to do was 
to take them sheep out to graze. He told him to be 
shore to git ’em back by night, and to be damn shore 
to look after the lambs and git every one of ’em back 
in the pen. If he didn’t there’d be some tall hell-raisin’ 
in the camp. 


20 


Tall Tales from Texas 


“Old Man Mason went back to his shack and set in 
the shade all day. Finally it was might nigh dark, and 
the herder hadn’t come in with the woollies. The Old 
Man waited a while longer, and still the herder didn’t 
show up. About nine o’clock he started out to the pens 
about three hundred yards from the house, to see if he 
could see anything of the critters. On the way out 
he met his new sheep-herder. 

“ ‘Did you have any trouble with the sheep?’ says he. 

“ ‘Not with the sheep,’ says the herder. ‘But,’ he 
says, ‘the lambs occasioned me considerable annoyance 
and perturbation.’ 

‘Well, Old Man Mason didn’t know what the hell 
he meant, and he didn’t want to ask, for fear he’d 
appear ign’rant; so went on to the pens to see what 
was the matter with the lambs. 

“The moon was up, and he could see over the rock 
fence. The sheep was all huddled up in the middle of 
the pen, and the Old Man counted a hundred and 
seventy-five jack-rabbits runnin’ around and buttin’ the 
fence, doin’ their damndest to git out.” 

“I got up considerable speed once myself,” said Joe, 
“once when I was a good deal younger than I am 
now; but it wasn’t no rabbit that I was chasin’; it was 
a prairie-fire.” 

“You mean it was the prairie-fire chasing you, don’t 
you?” said Lanky. 

“Naw,” said Joe. “It was jest as I was sayin’. I was 
chasin’ the prairie-fire. It wasn’t the prairie-fire 
chasin’ me. 


Speed 


21 


“It was back in the early days one time when I was 
out huntin’ cattle on the plains. One day in August, 

I recken it was, I follered off some cow tracks and got 
lost from the outfit. I was out two days without nothin’ 
to eat. Finally I come on a little herd of buffalo. I 
shoots a good fat cow and cuts off a piece of tender¬ 
loin. 

“Well, when I begins to look around for somethin’ 
to cook it with, not a thing can I find. There ain’t 
a stick of timber, not a twig, nor a dry buffalo chip 
nowhere around there. I was hungry enough to have 
et that meat raw and bloody, and I needed it too, for 
I was so hungry that I was weak in the knees. But 
somehow I never was much of a raw meat eater. It 
ain’t civilized. 

“Well, as I was sayin’, I couldn’t find no regular 
fuel; so I calkilated I’d try the prairie grass, which 
was long and curly and dry. I gathers up a big pile, 
puts the hunk of meat on my ramrod and holds it over 
the grass and lights a match. Jest one flash and the 
fire’s all gone, except the wind comes up all at once 
and sets the dang prairie on fire. 

“Well, sir, I takes out after that prairie-fire, holdin’ 
my meat over the blaze. It would burn along purty 
regular for a while; then all of a sudden it would give 
a big jump and tear out across the plains like hell after 
a wild woman, and I’d have to do my dangest to keep 
up with it. Well, I chased that prairie-fire about three 
hours, I recken, but I finally got my meat cooked. I et 
it—and it shore did taste good, too—and started back 
across the burnt country to where I had shot the 


22 


Tall Tales from Texas 


buffalo. Damn me, if I hadn’t run so far in three 
hours that it took me two days to git back. There my 
hoss was waitin’ fer me, and I found the outfit the 
next day.” 

“Yeah, that was purty good runnin’,” said Red. 
“But you nor the feller Hank was a-tellin’ about either 
wasn’t as swift as one of them college chaps we had 
on an outfit where I worked once. Not near so swift. 
Been a good thing for him if he hadn’t been so fast. 
Too swift for his own good.” 

“How was that?” asked Lanky. 

“Here’s the way it was,” said Red. “He was a 
greenhorn, but he was a-learnin’ fast. Would of made 
a good cowhand, pore feller. He got to be a purty 
good shot with a Winchester and six-shooter both, 
and he was always practicin’ on rabbits and coyotes 
and prairie-dogs, and things. Then he decided he’d 
have a lot of critters mounted and send ’em back to 
his folks. 

“Well, he gits everything he wants but a prairie-dog, 
but he jist can’t git a-holt of one of them critters.” 

“Are they hard to hit?” asked Lanky. 

“Oh, he could hit ’em all right. He got so he could 
plug ’em right in the eye, but they always jumped in 
their holes and got away. They’ll do it every time, 
Lanky; they’ll do it every time. Why, one day he took 
his forty-five Winchester and shot one of the critters 
clean in two, but the front-end grabbed the hind-end 
and run down the hole with it before he could git there. 

“Well, he asked the boss if there was any way he 
could git one, and the boss told him to take good aim, 


Speed 


23 



“Jist as he pulls the trigger, he runs to beat hell ” 







































24 


Tall Tales from Texas 


and jist as soon as he pulled the trigger to run jist 
as fast as he could and maybe he’d git there in time 
to grab the critter before he got away. 

“Well, he goes out and finds a prairie dog a-settin’ 
on his hole a-barkin’ in the sun. He pulls out his six- 
shooter and takes a good aim at the critter’s eye, and 
jist as soon as he pulls the trigger, he runs to beat 
hell, jist like the boss told him to. He got there in time, 
all right, and bent down to grab the prairie-dog; but 
jist as he touched it, the bullet hit him in the back jist 
below the left shoulder-blade. When we found him that 
evenin’, he was crippled so bad we had to shoot him. 
Too bad, too, for he had the makin’s of a first-class 
cowhand.” 

“Yeah,” said Joe, “them guys you all been tellin* 
about was mighty swift, but you don’t have to go back 
East to find speed. Why, I’ve seen an old cowhand 
that growed up right here in Texas that could of beat 
any of them Eastern fellers. 

“Tell you what I saw once. One day after the spring 
work was over, a bunch of us decided to have a base¬ 
ball game. Well, we chose up, but we liked one man 
havin’ enough men for two teams. 

“'What we gonna do?’ says I. ‘I guess we’ll have 
to git along with two fielders on our side.’ 

“Pete Dawson spoke up and says, ‘All you men git 
in the field, and I’ll pitch and ketch both.’ 

“And damn me, if that’s not what he done. He got 
on the pitcher’s box, which was a prairie-dog hole, and 
he’d throw a ball so it whistled like a bullet; then he 


Speed 


25 


run in a half circle and git behind the batter and 
ketch it. 

“Not a batter ever teched the ball. It was jest three 
up and three down with them, and there wasn’t nothin’ 
for the rest of us to do. 

“When it was Pete’s bat, he’d jest knock a slow 
grounder out toward first, and he’d make a home run 
before the first-baseman could git a-holt of the ball. We 
beat ’em ninty-six to nothin’. 

“One time Pete was with us when we was movin’ 
a bunch of wild Mexico steers. One night the fool 
brutes stampeded. We all jumped on our bosses to try 
to turn ’em and git ’em to millin’. 

“We all had good hosses, especially Pete, who had 
a fine hoss he’s won lots of money with; but we couldn’t 
git ahead of them steers. They was jest too swift for us. 

“Directly Pete jumps off and takes his slicker and 
six-shooter with him. He circles around, and in no 
time, after tromping about a half a dozen jackrabbits 
to death, he’s in front of that herd. 

“We all expects to see him git kilt, but he jest trots 
along in front of the critters wavin’ his slicker and 
firin’ his six-shooter. After he’d run that way about 
ten miles, the herd got to millin’ and purty soon they 
quieted down, and we never had no more trouble 
with ’em. 

“That jest naturally took all the pertness and spirit 
out of them brutes. They was so ashamed of them¬ 
selves that from then on out they was as gentle as 
a bunch of milk cows. 


26 


Tall Tales from Texas 


“The only thing that hurt Pete was that when it was 
over, his nose was bleedin’ like six-bits.” 

“Got too hot, I suppose,” said Lanky. 

“Naw,” said Joe, “that wasn’t it. The bleedin’ was 
from the outside. He jest run so fast that the wind 
jest naturally peeled all the hide off his nose, and he 
had to keep it tied up for about ten days till he growed 
some more skin.” 

“I bet a hoss and saddle,” said Red, “that he couldn’t 
of turned old man Coffey’s bull like that. That brute 
had speed. One time old man Coffey shipped out a 
train-load of cattle from where he was ranchin’ on the 
Lapan Flat; and this here bull decides he wants to go 
with ’em. They cut him back, and the train pulls out 
in the night. 

“Well, sir, the next mornin’ them cowpunchers looks 
out the caboose winder, and there’s that bull trottin’ 
along by the train, bellerin’ and pawin’ up the dust, and 
hookin’ at the telegraph poles as he passes ’em by. He 
follered that train all the way to Kansas City and had 
to be shipped back. 

“The fellers started to sell him to the packers jist 
for spite, but they knowed old man Coffey never would 
git over it if they did.” 

“Yeah, I heard of that critter,” said Joe. “Fact is 
I rode a hundred miles jest to see him once, but I 
didn’t git to. 

“We gits to old man Coffey’s place about dinner 
time, and we goes in and asks if he’s home. 

“ ‘Naw, he ain’t at home right now,’ says his wife. 


Speed 


27 


‘Git down and look at your saddles, and come in and 
eat/ 

“ ‘Where is he this mornin’ ?’ I asks. 

“ ‘He left ‘bout nine o’clock/ she says. ‘He’s goin’ 
over to Phoenix. Said he might go by Roswell/ 

“ ‘I reckon we won’t git to see him,’ I says. 

“ ‘Jest unsaddle your hosses,’ she says. ‘I look for 
him back about an hour by sun, that is, if he don’t 
have no hard luck.’ 

“ ‘Wonder if you could tell us where his fast bull 
is?’ I says. ‘We come over to see him.’ 

“ ‘Oh, she says, ‘he’s ridin’ the bull. That’s how 
I know he’ll git back tonight.’ ” 

“I reckon that bull could of outrun a milamo bird,” 
said Hank. 

“No doubt he could,” said Joe. “No doubt he could.” 

“What is a milamo bird like?” asked Lanky. 

But Joe forestalled Hank by saying, “Lanky, you 
didn’t git enough sleep last night, what with all that 
rattlesnake skeer. I seen you noddin’ while Hank was 
a-tellin’ about that sheepherder of Old Man Mason’s, 
though I couldn’t blame you much for that. Go to bed, 
son, and maybe we’ll see a milamo bird tomorrow.” 


BIRDS AND BEASTS 


It was Lanky’s third night in cow camp. The herd 
had been bedded, and the first night shift had gone on. 
Lanky, sore of muscle, but extremely contented, sat 
by the fire with Red Wallace, Hank Williams, and Joe 
Martin, the men who on the first night had imparted 
to him the esoteric lore of the rattlesnake, and who on 
the second night had entertained him with yarns of 
marvelous speed. 

Lanky had proved a good listener. He had done his 
best to appear credulous. He had interrupted seldom, 
and when he had, he had always followed his cue, 
and had propounded only the questions that the narra¬ 
tors wanted him to ask. It is not surprising, therefore, 
that on this night the older men were loaded for him. 

It was Red Wallace that discharged the first missile. 

“We ’as speakin’ of milamo birds last night,” he 
observed. “I seen sign today, lots of sign.” 

“That’s funny; I done that very same thing,” said 
Hank. “I seen, I reckon, a hundred holes where they’d 
been feedin’.” 

“Do you suppose we’re likely to see any of them?” 
asked Lanky. 

“Not likely,” said Joe, “not likely. They’re mighty 
scerce these days, mighty scerce, and mighty shy, 
mighty shy. I ain’t seen one in years. You might keep 
your eye peeled though; we might happen on one any 
time. We might. You never can tell.” 

28 


Birds and Beasts 


29 


“Yeah, we might,” broke in Hank. “Still we’re more 
likely to hear one than to see one. They’ve got a way 
of knowin’ when somebody’s about, though he’s a mile 
off. Yeah, they’re mighty hard to see, ’specially these 
days; mighty hard to see.” 

“What sort of a bird is the milamo?” asked Lanky. 
“What is he like?” 

“Oh,” replied Hank, “he’s like a milamo. They 
ain’t nothin’ else jest like him.” 

“Is he large or small?” asked Lanky. 

“He’s rather large,” said Hank, “though not as big 
as an ostrich I reckon, though somewhat bigger than 
a crane, which he somewhat resembles in general make¬ 
up and conformation. 

“In the fall when the rains comes and fills up the 
lakes, like they are now, the critters comes in, or used 
to, and feeds around the edges of the water. They’ve 
got long legs like stilts for wadin’ in the water, a long 
neck, and a long beak that they uses to bore into the 
soft ground for the earthworms, which is their princi¬ 
pal food and diet. 

“I ain’t talkin’ about the little puny earthworms like 
school boys use to fish with. Naw, sir, a milamo bird 
would be ashamed of his self if he et one of them kind. 
He digs down into the ground and ketches the big 
fellers, shore-nuff he-man worms that looks like inner- 
tubes. I’ve seen holes you could hide a hoss’s leg in 
where them critters ’ad been escavatin’ for grub. More 
than one good cow hoss has had to be shot from steppin’ 
in holes that these birds has made, not to say nothin’ 
of the good cow-hands that has had their necks broke. 


30 


Tall Tales from Texas 


“But as I was sayin’ about the milamo bird, he jest 
has a way of knowin’ where the big worms lives, and 
when he comes to a place where he knows one of them 
big fellers is all curled up takin’ a nap down under 
the ground, he sticks his bill into the soil and begins 
to bore and bore, walkin’ around and around. Purty 
soon his bill goes out of sight, then his head, then his 
neck, clean up to his shoulders. That’s the way you 
can slip up on one of ’em. If you can ketch him in jest 
that stage, maybe you can git sight of him. 

“Well, he bores around a while in the hole he has 
dug; then all at once he sets back like a hoss when 
there’s a big steer on the other end of the rope; and 
you know then he’s got a-holt of one of them big 
worms. The more he pulls, the more the worm 
stretches. If he lets up the least bit, the worm jerks 
his head and neck back into the hole. I seen one once 
a-bobbin’ up and down like that for two hours and 
fifteen minutes before he finally got his worm. 

“Well, he pulls and tussles and yanks and jerks, and 
finally the worm jest can’t stand it no longer and has 
to let go. He shoots out jest like a nigger-shooter when 
you turn it loose, and like as not he hits the milamo 
in the eye. But he’s a good-natured bird and don’t git 
ringy about it. Jest why he does it, I don’t know; 
maybe he’s so glad to git the worm out, or maybe he 
sees the joke’s on him, after all; anyhow, when the 
worm comes out and hits him in the eye, he jest 
naturally gits tickled and rears back on his hind legs 
and laughs through his beak so you can hear him a 
mile or more.” 


Birds and Beasts 


31 


“I see,” said Lanky. “A strange bird.” 

“But mighty shy,” replied Hank, “mighty shy.” 

“Yeah, they’re shy critters all right,” agreed Joe, 
“but they ain’t near as shy as the whiffle-pooffle. Why, 
them things is so bashful they don’t feel comfortable 
unless they’re hid in the bottom of a bottomless lake.” 

“Are they a fish?” asked Lanky. 

“Not exactly a fish,” explained Joe, “a sort of cross, 
I reckon, between an eel and a gila monster.” 

“Are there any around here?” asked Lanky. 

“Well, maybe,” replied Joe; “maybe a few. Still I 
doubt it. You see right around here the lakes go dry 
sometimes in the dry season, and the whiffle-pooffle 
wants water, and plenty of it, mncha agaa. Still there 
may be a few. Out in the Roswell country, they used 
to be numerous. Also in Toyah Creek and Leon water- 
holes. I expect, though, they’re gittin' scerce out in 
them parts now. All game is gittin’ scerce. Still, them 
critters is mighty hard to ketch, and it’s jest a few 
that knows how to do it. Mighty few in fact.’-’ 

“Do people fish for them, then?” asked Lanky. 

“Some does,” replied Joe, “but it ain’t no use to 
fish for ’em with a regular fishin’ outfit. I’ve seen 
them rich dudes from the East come out with their 
fine tackle, rods and reels and all that fool finery, and 
fish and fish for ’em all day long and never git a 
nibble. Still they can be caught.” 

“How does one catch them?” asked Lanky. 

“So far as I know it was Pecos Bill that discovered 
the method. Durin’ Pecos Bill’s time there was a lot 
of people that didn’t believe there was any sech animal 


32 


Tall Tales from Texas 


as the whiffle-pooffle livin' in the bottom of the lakes. 
Bill said he knowed there was, and he’d show ’em. So 
he studied and studied, and finally he found a way to 
capture the critters. First he gits together a rowboat, 
a long post-hole auger, and a can of oil. Then he hunts 
up the funniest story-teller he can find and takes him 
along and sets out. 

“He rows out on the lake to where the water’s deep; 
then he takes the post-hole auger and bores a hole 
clean down to the bottom so as the whiffle-pooffle can 
come up to the top. Then he has the story-teller tell 
the funniest stories he can think of—all about Pat 
and Mike and an Englishman and a Scotchman, and 
all that. 

“Purty soon the whiffle-pooffle gits interested and 
pricks up his ears. Then Bill tells the story-teller to git 
funnier. Then purty soon the whiffle-pooffle is so 
am ;ed that he comes up through the hole and sticks 
out his head. Bill tells the man to keep on gittin’ funnier 
and funnier till the whiffle-pooffle comes clean out on 
top of the water. Then Bill begins to ply the oars, very 
gentle-like at first. The whiffle-pooffle is so interested 
and amused that he jest naturally can’t help but foiler 
the story-teller, who all the time is gittin’ funnier and 
funnier. Bill rows faster and faster, all the time 
makin’ straight for the bank. 

“Jest before he gits there, when he is rowin’ as 
fast as he can, he pours the oil out on the water and 
cuts sharply to the left. By that time the whiffle-pooffle 
has got up so much speed on the slick water that he 
can’t stop, and he jest naturally slides right out on 


Birds and Beasts 





“Party soon the whiffle-pooffle gits interested and pricks up his ears,” 





























































































































































34 


Tall Tales from Texas 


the bank. Then Pecos Bill lands on him. If you ever 
git one of the critters on the land, he’s jest as helpless 
as a year-old baby. But they’re mighty bashful, mighty 
bashful.” 

“In that particular, thay ain’t a-tall like the club¬ 
tailed glyptodont,” said Red, “which is a very fero¬ 
cious and vicious beast. I’ll tell you, Lanky, when 
you’re ridin’ around in the canyons and meet one of 
them fellers, you’d better not git into any disputes 
with him about your highway rights. Jist give him the 
whole road and don’t argue with him. And be careful 
you don’t hang around under the rim-rock when them 
critters is around.” 

“I take it they are animals,” said Lanky. 

“Yeah, I guess they belong to the kingdom of 
beasts,” replied Red. “Some people call ’em whang- 
doodles, but they ain’t real whang-doodles, bein’ much 
bigger and more ferocious. They’re purty scerce 
now, but when we work the canyon tomorow T , I can 
show you places where they have been. Yes, sir, I can 
show you the very spot where one of them fellers took 
off one of the very best friends I ever had in this 
world.” 

“A sort of mountain lion, I suppose,” said Lanky. 

“Son, one of them babies would make a mountain 
lion look like a kitten. Besides, they don’t belong to 
the feline species nohow, bein’ more like a kangaroo 
in build, and about sixteen hands high when on all- 
fours, though most of the time they hop along on their 
hind legs and tail and keep their forepaws ready to 
biff anything that gits in their vCay. And if one of them 


Birds and Beasts 


35 


critters hits you—well, you’re lucky if they find any¬ 
thing to bury. 

“However, that ain’t their main method of combat; 
that ain’t the way one of ’em took off my dear friend— 
Jack Snodgrass was his name. The glyptodont has got 
a big flat tail made out of stuff like cow’s horn, except 
there ain’t no bone in it. This tail bein’ springy is a 
great aid and help in more ways than one. He can 
jump along with it and clear the brush, and he can land 
on it when he wants to jump off of a cliff, and he don’t 
feel no bad effects from the jar. 

“Well, I started to tell you how one of them beasts 
took off my dear friend Jack Snodgrass. Jack used 
to work on this outfit, and one fall he was workin’ the 
canyon, jist like we’ll be tomorrow, and Jack gits a 
glimpse of the glyptodont. Jack was always a curious 
lad; so he tarried around to see what the critter was 
about. Jack was on the other side of a canyon, anyway, 
and he ’lowed he’d have plenty of time to make his 
stampede if the critter showed any signs of combat. So 
Jack jist looks across to see what’s goin’ on. 

“Directly the glyptodont gits wind of him and looks 
at him right straight for a minute or two. But Jack 
still ain’t worried none, havin’ the canyon between him 
and the ferocious beast. He jist stands there and 
watches him to see what he is about. Purty soon he 
notices that the glyptodont is spadin’ around on the 
ground with his tail. Presently he scoops up a big 
boulder, jist like you’d lift it with a shovel. He carries 
this on his tail, bein’ careful not to let it fall off, and 
backs up and eases it off on the top of a bigger boulder. 


36 


Tall Tales from Texas 


Jack begins to try to figure out a way to capture the 
brute; he ’lows if he ever could git him broke, he’d 
be a mighty handy animal to have around the place 
about tankin’ time. 

“Well, the glyptodont walks over to the other side 
of the rock he’s set up and squats on his hind legs; 
then he draws up his front legs and begins to whirl 
around and around on his hind legs, jist like a spool 
of barbed wire on a crowbar when you’re stringin’ 
fence. After he spins around a while, he lets down his 
tail, which hits the rock he’s set up, which comes 
through the air like a cannon-ball. That was the last 
thing pore Jack ever knowed. We buried him, pore 
feller, next day—that is, all of him we could find. 
When we’re over there tomorrow, I’ll show you the 
place where he got kilt, as well as a lot of other places 
where them critters has catapulted rocks up and down 
the canyons jist to keep in practice and for the fun of 
seein’ ’em roll. Yeah, them club-tailed glyptodonts is 
ferocious animals.” 

“They’re vicious brutes,” agreed Joe, “but they ain’t 
got much on the gwinter.” 

“I never heard of a gwinter,” said Lanky. 

“Well,” replied Joe, “did you ever hear of a goda- 
phro?” 

“No.” 

“Did you ever hear of a side-swiper ?” 

“No.” 

“Did you ever hear of a mountain-stem-winder?” 

“No, I never heard of them, either.” 

“Well, they’re really all one and the same thing, 


Birds and Beasts 


37 


but the real true and correct name is gwinter.” 

“And what sort of a beast is he?” asked Lanky. 

“Well, he’s a grass-eatin’ quadruped,” said Joe, 
“something like a cross between a buffalo and a moun¬ 
tain-goat, only he’s a lot more ferocious. The peculiar 
thing about the gwinter is his legs. Instead of havin’ 
four legs of equal length like a critter ought to have, 
or two short legs in front and two long ones behind, 
like the glyptodont, these brutes have two long legs 
on the downhill side and two short legs on the uphill 
side. This is mighty convenient for ’em, since they 
don’t live on level ground nohow. Some of ’em has 
their right legs long, and some of ’em has their right 
legs short, dependin’ on which way they graze around 
the mountains. The Chisos and the Davis and the 
Guadalupe mountains used to be full of ’em. Up there, 
them critters was thicker than the buffalo or the ante¬ 
lope on the plains, but they’re gittin’ mighty scerce now. 
Still, they took off many a cow-hand in the early days, 
and sometimes yet a tenderfoot gits in the way of one 
of ’em and don’t come back home to the chuck wagon 
at night. 

“If one of them critters ever starts toward you, 
Lanky, don’t for anything let him know you’re scered. 
If you try to run, he’ll git you shore. Jest stand there 
and look him right in the eye like you was glad to see 
him. He’ll be cornin’ right toward you with his head 
down like a bat shot out of a cannon. Still, don’t move, 
and if you’re in the saddle, hold your hoss. Jest let 
that gwinter alone till he gits in two steps of you, then 
take a couple of steps down the hill. He can’t run the 


38 


Tall Tales from Texas 


other way, and you’ll be safe. Ten to one he’ll be so 
mad about it he’ll try to foiler you, anyway, and when 
he gits his short legs down hill, he’s a goner. Jest stand 
by and watch him roll down the mountain and break 
his fool neck. That’s one reason why they’re so scerce, 
the cowboys learned that trick. Another reason is that 
they fought among themselves too much. You see, 
them that has their long legs on the right used to meet 
them that has their long legs on the left as they grazed 
around the mountains. And when two of ’em met like 
that, they always tangled up. Finally they fought till 
the weaker side all got kilt, so now there’s only one 
kind on each mountain. On some mountains it’s the 
right-leggers, and on some mountains it’s the left- 
leggers.” 

“If somebody would capture one alive,” said Lanky, 
“he could sell him to a circus for five thousand dollars.” 

“That’s been tried, son; that’s been tried,” replied 
Joe. “However, your figger’s too small. Once when I 
was punchin’ cattle in the Chisos, Barnum and Bailey 
sent a feller all the way down from New York City 
with fifty thousand dollars to pay any man that would 
cage him a gwinter. For a long time he couldn't git 
nobody to try it, till finally he come to our outfit. 

“ ‘I won’t endanger the lives of my men in any sech 
manner and fashion,’ says the boss. ‘However,’ he says, 
turnin’ to us, ‘if any of you men want to try it on your 
own hook, you can. They ain’t much work to do right 
now, and I’ll let you off for a few days.’ 

“Well, we gits our best mounts and ropes, and looks 
after our cinches, and sets out. We scouts around a 


Birds and Beasts 


39 


while, and shore nuff we hears one snort right near the 
foot of Egg-shell Mountain. We lets out our wildest 
yells and fires off our six-shooters, and somehow, by 
luck I guess, we gits the critter buffaloed, and he goes 
tearin’ around the mountain and us after him. Each 
time he goes around the mountain he gits a little higher. 
We sees our hosses is goin’ to give out if we don’t 
figger out some way to spell ’em. We ’lows that since 
we got the critter on the run, two of us will be enough 
to go around the mountain, and the others stays put. 
Then on the next round, two more goes, and so on and 
so forth. Each time we gits a bit nearer the top. 
Finally, we all joins in, in order to be there when he 
gits to the top and can’t go no further. And purty soon 
there he is at the top.” 

“How did he escape?” asked Lanky. 

“Why, the brute jest turned right through his self, 
jest clean wrong side out like a sock, and run the other 
way.” 

“And that was the last you saw of him ?” 

“Oh, we used to see him occasionally, as we knowed 
by his long legs bein’ on the other side; but when 
winter come, he caught cold and died. And that’s what 
you’ll do, Lanky, if you set there by the coals and 
shiver. You’d better git a little shut-eye before you 
stand guard.” 


WIND AND WEATHER 


The day had been blustery enough, and Lanky’s eyes 
were red from the sand’s having cut into his eyeballs. 
There was still dust in the air, but at twilight the wind 
had subsided, and Lanky was experiencing that feeling 
of intense relief that comes when the sandstorm is over. 

During the day there had been little talk. Lanky had 
most of the time ridden within normal hailing distance 
of Red Wallace; but conversation would have been 
difficult, and neither he nor Red had been in the mood 
for it. At noon each man swallowed his beans and 
bacon as rapidly as he could. Even then, he consumed 
a considerable quantity of sand. 

The old-timers were sitting expectantly around the 
fire. Their experience with tenderfeet told them that 
Lanky would open the conversation, and that the topic 
would be the wind. 

“Terrible day we had,” he observed. “How much 
sandstorm weather are we likely to have?” 

“Son,” replied Red, “what you’ve seen today is the 
gentle zephers of spring. You ain’t seen a real sand¬ 
storm.” 

“Then,” replied Lanky, “I’d like to know how I’m to 
know one when I meet it.” 

“Well, I’ll tell you, Lanky,” said Red. “I’ll tell you 
exactly how you can know. Do you recollect seein’ 
a log-chain hangin’ suspended from the big hackberry 
tree in front of the bunkhouse?” 


40 


Winds and Weather 


41 


“That immense chain ?” asked Lanky. 

“Yeah,” said Red. “That's a log-chain. And you 
wondered what it was up there for, no doubt. Well, it's 
to tell when there’s a sandstorm. As long as it’s 
hangin’ straight down, we know there ain’t no wind to 
speak of. When it hangs out at an angle of forty-five 
degrees, we speak of a slight breeze. It’s only when 
she’s stickin’ straight out parallel to the ground that 
it’s correct and proper to speak of a windstorm.” 

“I’d think winds like that would blow all the houses 
and windmills over,” observed Lanky. 

“It ain’t only the houses and windmills,” said Hank. 
“It’s real-estate. Why, there was a feller come in here 
one time and filed on a section of land in Colonel 
Slaughter’s pasture, and a big sandstorm come along, 
and he never did find that section. He advertised in all 
the papers for it, offerin’ a reward for its return, and 
he got lots of answers from people down in the brush 
country that had stray sections on their hands that 
they wanted to git rid of, but he looked ’em over and 
said none of ’em had his brand on ’em. And so he had 
to go back East.” 

“Yeah, the wind does some mighty funny things,” 
said Joe. “I come dang near losin’ the best saddle hoss 
I ever had on account of a sandstorm.” 

“I guess he got against a drift fence where the 
tumbleweeds and sand collected and buried the critter 
alive,” said Hank. 

“Naw, that wasn’t it,” replied Joe, “though I’ve dug 
many a cow-brute out of the sand drifts. It wasn’t 
that. In them days I was workin’ cattle out in the 


42 


Tall Tales from Texas 


Monahans country. One evenin’ the boss tells me to 
swing up a little draw, sayin’ the wagon would be at 
the head. Well, I got out of the draw jest at dark, and 
I looked around, but I couldn’t see no campfire any¬ 
wheres in sight. I rode around a while, but still not 
seein’ no signs of the wagon, and bein’ tired, I decided 
to turn in. I was scered to turn my hoss loose, 
(Brown Jug was his name) for fear he’d strike off 
to the remuda and leave me there afoot. So I stakes him 
to a little cottonwood bush on top of a mound. I knowed 
better than to hobble the critter, for he was wise to 
walkin’ off with the hobbles on. Well, when I got him 
staked out, I took off the saddle, which I used for a 
pillow, and the blanket, which I used for a bed, and 
went to sleep. 

“In the mornin’ when I woke up and looked around, 
the scenery wasn’t exactly familiar. There was a big 
cottonwood tree which I couldn’t remember seein’ the 
night before, and I wondered how I come to miss it. 
And I looked some more, and there wasn’t any Brown 
Jug in sight anywheres. I thinks to myself, the critter 
never played a dirty trick like that on me before, and 
I ’lows he must be around somewheres. Shorely, I 
says to myself, I ought to be able to find the bush 
I tied him to. So I whistles three times, and then I 
hears a weak nicker ’way up in the top of the tree, and 
I looks up, and damn me if there wasn’t that pore 
critter, with his tongue hangin’ out, dang nigh choked 
to death. 

“Then I seen what had happened, I’d tied the hoss 
on top of a sand-dune. The wind had come up and the 


Wind and Weather 


43 


sand had bio wed away. What I calculated on bein’ a 
bush was in fact a great big tree—so dang big in fact, 
that the thirty-foot lariat wouldn’t let pore Brown Jug 
more than half way to the ground. If I hadn’t woke 
up jest when I did, the pore brute would of choked 
to death shore.” 

“How did you get him down?’’ asked Lanky. 

“Oh, that was easy,” said Joe. “In them days I 
always had my old six-gun by me, and I jest whipped 
her out and put a bullet through the rope and let Brown 
Jug down. The fall didn’t seem to hurt him none, and 
after he blowed a little while, he was as pert as ever. 

“However, the wind got up again in the middle of 
the mornin’, and the only way I could keep the hoss 
on the ground was to tie big rocks to the horn of the 
saddle.” 

“That shows you’ve got more sense than a prairie- 
dog,” said Hank, “which surprises me. Many a time 
on the South Plains durin’ a sandstorm, I’ve seen them 
critters ten feet in the air, diggin’ with all their might, 
tryin’ to git back in their holes.” 

“I’ll tell you what I’ve seen,” said Red, “and it was 
the funniest sight I ever saw caused by a sandstorm. 
One day in the spring the boss sent me out to pizen 
prairie-dogs. He was one man I didn’t work for long; 
he jist couldn’t stand to see a man not doin’ somethin’. 
So when the wind would git bad and he didn’t want 
to go out his self, he would send us out to ride fence 
and pizen dogs and the like. 

“Well, this time I rode over to where I knowed 
there was a big town, and I rode up, and what do you 


44 


Tall Tales from Texas 


suppose I saw? The sand was all blowed away, and 
there was them holes stickin’ forty feet in the air. 
I never knowed before that time how crooked them 
critters made their residences.” 

“The wind’s purty hard on the rodents sometimes,” 
said Hank. “I knowed a wind, however, that helped 
out a pore human down on Sulphur Draw that was 
about to starve. This feller had come in to farm, and 
he raised a cribful of corn, but the ranchers wouldn’t 
buy it because it wasn’t shelled, and wouldn’t go in a 
morral. So the pore farmer was about to starve, and 
his old lady and kids to boot. 

“This feller was jest fresh from the sticks and didn’t 
have much confidence in anybody, anyway, and he 
’lowed the ranchers was waitin’ for a chance to steal 
his corn. So he nailed up the crib door good and tight. 
He noticed a knothole in one of the walls, but he saw 
it was too little for an ear of corn to go through; so 
he jest let that go. 

“One day a wind come up, and the farmer and his 
folks hid in the dugout like prairie-dogs, and the next 
day the wind laid, and they crawled out and looked 
around; and there was corn cobs scattered all along¬ 
side the crib. The old man thought shore somebody had 
stole his corn, but when he got the crib door open, he 
saw it there all shelled as purty as if he’d don$ it 
his self. 

“He was a sort of ignorant and superstitious man, 
and the next day when I happened by, he says to me 
that the fairies had come and shelled his corn. Well, 
I never did take no stock in fairies and the like, and 


Wind and Weather 


45 


I knowed there must be a reasonable and sane explana¬ 
tion somewheres. So I picked up one of the corn cobs 
and stuck it in the knothole. It was jest a good tight 
fit. Then I told the old man what must of happened. 
The wind got up and would of blowed all his corn out 
of the crib, but the knothole wasn’t big enough for an 
ear to go through. Hence each ear got shelled, and all 
the corn was left in the crib. It was jest as simple as 
that. Perfectly natural. If them old fellers we read 
about that believed in fairies and witches, and all that 
crap, had jest of used their heads, they’d found out 
that everything’s natural and simple enough. They 
put me in mind of Mex’cans. But as I was about to 
say, the old man sold his corn and got on purtv well.” 

“There was a farmer close to us one time,” said Joe, 
“that lost his milk cows in a curious manner. He had 
a little patch of pop-corn, and one hot day the cows 
broke into the patch and started eatin’ it up. All of 
a sudden that corn begun poppin’ and flyin’ every which 
away.” 

“Did the shooting grains kill the cows?” asked 
Lanky. 

“Naw,” said Joe. “When the fool critters saw all 
that pop-corn flyin’ through the air, they thought it was 
snow, and jest naturally froze to death.” 

“Do you ever have tornadoes out here?” asked 
Lanky. 

“You mean cyclones?” asked Joe. “Well, yes, some¬ 
times. A queer thing happened to me one time up here 
jest below the Caprock. We was goin’ up the trail, and 
one evenin’ it was hot as blazes and sultry and still. 


46 


Tall Tales from Texas 


The cattle was giftin' nervous and we was all expectin’ 
hell to break loose any time. And shore nuff it did. 
A cloud come up in the northwest and it thundered and 
lightened, and then the storm struck us. Them steers 
jest naturally histed their tails and left the country. 
I was on a good hoss, but it was all I could do to stay 
in sight of them cattle. My pony was givin’ me all he 
had, and he wasn’t gainin’ on them steers none. Neither 
was the other boys giftin' close to ’em. 

“D’rec’ly I looked back over my shoulder like, and 
there was them clouds bilin’ and whirlin’ around in the 
sky; then all at once a funnel drops down and takes 
out after me. I started quirtin’ my hoss. I feel right 
mean about it yet when I think about it, for he was 
doin’ his best to ketch that herd, and he couldn’t do 
no more. 

“Well, the next thing I knowed I was up in the air 
still in the saddle with my hoss under me, whirlin’ 
round and round like a top. That cyclone carried me 
around in the air like that for a half an hour or more, 
me scered all the time that it was goin’ to drop me. 
But it didn’t. After a while it sets me down jest as 
gentle as a mother with her baby. 

“I looks up, and there’s the herd cornin’ hell-bent for 
election right toward me. I gits off my slicker and fires 
off my six-shooter and turns them steers and gits ’em 
to millin’. Purty soon the other boys rides up, and we 
gits ’em quieted down, and the whole outfit has to set 
up and sing to ’em all night. 

“The next day we counted ’em out, and we hadn’t 
lost a head; not a single cow-brute was missin’. If it 


Wind and Weather 


47 



“Jist as I teched the crown a feller yelled out. 

















48 


Tall Tales from Texas 


hadn’t been for that cyclone, we’d been gathering cattle 
for a week, and then likely we wouldn’t of found ’em 
all.” 

“That’s the way it is,” said Red. “Some winds is 
good and some winds is bad, but I’d rather have sand¬ 
storms and risk a cyclone once in a while than to have 
mud in the rainy season like they have on the Black 
Land divide.” 

“We found lots of mud when we drove through 
last fall,” said Lanky. 

“You jist thought you found mud,” replied Red. 
“You ought to have seen them flats before they begun 
makin’ roads. When I first hit that country, they was 
jist fencin’ off the lanes, and when I got a job, the 
boss put me to ridin’ fence. One day I was ridin’ along 
by the lane, and I looked over and there was a good, 
brand-new Stetson hat layin’ on the top of a mud-hole. 
I thinks to myself, ‘That’s a good hat, and I might as 
well have it as the next feller.’ So I got down and got 
a-holt of a fence-post to steady myself, and reached 
out to git it. Jist as I teched the crown a feller yelled 
out: ‘Hey, what you doin’ there?’ he says. Then I 
noticed for the first time that there was a man’s head 
stickin’ out of the mud. I asked the feller if he needed 
any help, but he said he was ridin’ a mighty good hoss, 
and he guessed he’d make it through all right. He 
afterwards got to be a mighty good friend of mine. 
Pete Jackson was his name.” 

“Well, sir,” said Joe, “speakin’ of mud, that puts 
me in mind of one experience I had goin’ up the trail 
in ’83. We was kinda late in gittin’ through, and the 


Wind and Weather 


49 


rainy weather had already set in before we crossed the 
Black Land divide. We hadn’t hardly got across when 
we begun to notice that our hosses was losin’ all their 
pertness. The boss’s pet cow-hoss got as lazy as a 
jackass. My own favorite hoss, Brown Jug, jest got 
sleepier and sleepier, till finally he jest laid down and 
went to sleep and never did wake up. We lost half of 
our remuda jest like that. 

“The boss was terribly worried because he didn’t 
like the idea of trainin’ on foot, and besides he didn’t 
know whether his hands would stay with him or not 
if he didn’t have nothin’ for ’em to ride. Well, I 
figured there must be a cause of hoss sickness jest as 
there is for everything else. So I begins to take note. 
I notices that all the sick hosses has mud-balls on their 
tails. Then I guesses what must be the matter. The 
weight of the mud on the critters’ tails was makin’ 
sech a pull on the brutes’ hides that they jest couldn’t 
shet their eyes. And I figured that bein’ unable to shet 
their eyes, they was jest naturally dyin’ for sleep. I tells 
the boss, and we cuts off the balls of mud. As soon 
as we would cut one off, the critter would fall into a 
deep sleep, jest like Adam in the Bible. Some of the 
worst ones slept steady for four days and nights, and 
then woke up fresh and pert as ever.” 

“Still,” said Red, “it ain’t the mud and it ain’t the 
wind that makes Texas weather bad; it’s the sudden 
and quick changes.” 

“That’s right,” said Hank; “that’s right, as our new 
boss found out once. He ’lowed he was goin’ to keep 
a record of the weather. So he comes home with a 


50 


Tall Tales from Texas 


brand-new thermometer and hangs it up on the front 
porch, and calls us boys to look at it. Well, sir, while 
we was standin’ there the mercury runs up to about 
ninety or a hundred to git a good start. Then all of a 
sudden, down she goes with sech a jar that she jest 
naturally knocks the bottom right out of the tube and 
ruins the boss’s new thingamabob. Good instrument 
it was too; not jest a mercantile advertisement, but 
a good one that he had bought and paid money for. 

“But that didn’t faze that man none. He sent off 
back East somewheres and had one made to order with 
a rubber cushion in the bottom of the tube to take up 
the jar when the mercury fell. He got a patent on the 
idear and got rich. His thermometers are in use all 
over the Southwest. They’re the only kind that’ll stand 
the climate. 

“This feller was jest crazy about his new ther¬ 
mometer. He was always lookin’ to see how cold it was 
or how hot it was. Once a norther come up in the 
night, and he jest had to git up and go look at his 
instrument. He struck a match so he could see, and the 
match jest froze, and he had to build a fire and warm 
it up before he could blow it out.’’ 

“That might sound a bit windy to a feller that didn’t 
know the country,” said Joe, “but it’s probably so. 
I seen sunshine freeze right on the streets of Amarillo 
one time. Durin’ one of the long cold spells they had 
up there, all the chickens died for want of sleep. You 
see, they couldn’t tell when it was night, and the sun¬ 
shine stayed froze so long they jest naturally died.” 

“Speakin’ of things freezin’,” said Red, “I’ve seen 


Wind and Weather 


51 


words freeze. Once we was out in a blizzard cuttin’ 
drift fences, and tryin’ to point the herds to the can¬ 
yons. And we’d yell and cuss the critters, but we 
couldn’t even hear ourselves. Well, sir, we finally got 
the brutes into the brakes and was on our way back 
when it started moderatin’. All of a sudden we heard 
the dangest mess of yellin’ and cussin’ and cow-bawlin’ 
that you ever heard tell of. Presently we recognized 
the very words we had spoke on the way down.” 

“It seems to me,” said Lanky, “that I learned a story 
something like that from Addison and Steele.” 

“Doubtless,” said Red; “doubtless you did. This that 
I was tellin’ about happened right over here on Addi¬ 
son and Steele’s outfit. I was workin’ for ’em at the 
time.” 

“Yeah,” said Hank, “them northers come mighty 
sudden at times. One time Bill Anker and me rides 
up to a tank, and the day’s so warm and purty we 
decides to go in swimmin’. We was jest ready to strip 
off, when all of a sudden we notices the bullfrogs all 
along the dam jumpin’ out of the willows like bats shot 
out of a cannon. They hit the water all right and went 
under, but them critters got fooled that time. They 
poked out their heads like they always do; and there 
they was froze tight as a hat-band in the ice. All along 
the side of the tank for about ten feet from the dam. 
the ice was jest naturally speckled with frog heads.” 

“That puts me in mind,” said Joe, “of a tale Bill 
Bishop used to tell. Bill said one time he started in 
swimmin’ and dove ofiF of a high bluff into a deep hole 
of water. But jest as he was leavin’ the bluff, a drought 


52 


Tall Tales from Texas 


come and dried up all the water. Bill thought shore 
he’d kill his self on the rock bottom of the creek-bed, 
but down comes a rise from a rain up above and fills 
up the hole jest in time to save him.” 

“Lucky,” said Lanky. 

“Yes,” said Joe, “I guess he was, yet not so powerful 
lucky, after all. Jest as he was stickin’ up his head, it 
got froze in the ice like them frogs Hank was tellin’ 
you about, and he had to stay there all day before the 
boys come and chopped him out. Leastwise that’s what 
he used to tell, but he was sech a damn windy that 
you never knowed when he was tellin’ the truth and 
when he was try in’ to load somebody.” 


BY THE BREADTH OF A HAIR 


Lanky had become intensely interested in the narra¬ 
tives of Joe and his apprentices. He was happy that 
he had been assigned to the same guard. All during 
the day he had been trying to think of the most 
pregnant question to put when the day’s work should 
be over, and he should again sit with the windy trio 
around the campfire. He thought of one that he felt 
sure would elicit an interesting yarn. 

“What,” he asked Joe, “was the narrowest escape 
you ever had?” 

Joe pulled out a shuck. He reached leisurely the sack 
of Bull Durham in his vest pocket. He rolled the 
cigarette with deliberation. He was not going to play 
the fool by committing himself in any superlative way 
until he had heard from his upstart rivals, young men 
trying to usurp the arts and prerogatives universally 
recognized as belonging to the old. 

“Well,” he said, “that would be hard to say, hard 
to say. When a man knocks around as much as I have, 
and in the days when the West was wild, too, he’s 
bound to of had many a close call, what with Mex’cans, 
rustlers, bad men, stampedes, blizzards, and the like. 
However, one of the worst sceres I ever had was once 
when I got caught in a buffalo stampede. I reckon you 
know somethin’ about the buffalo?” 

“Yes,” said Lanky, “I’ve read a little bit about 
them.” 


53 


54 


Tall Tales from Texas 


“Well,” said Joe, “I can’t say as I’ve read very much 
about ’em. I seen the plains black with ’em. And I’ve 
killed a many a one in my day, too. 

“Well, I started out to tell you what a close shave 
I had one time at Buffalo Gap. I was a fool young 
buck then, and one mornin’ in the spring after I first 
hit that country, I heard a great roarin’ and bellowin’, 
and I listened a while, wonderin’ what it was. Then 
I says to myself, ‘I bet that’s a buffalo herd;’ for 
I had heard the old-timers tell about ’em, and how they 
come through the pass called Buffalo Gap every spring, 
goin’ north. 

“I rides up on one of the hills that overlooks the Gap 
so as I could look right down on the beasts as they 
come by. There I stops to see ’em pass. I didn’t git 
there much too soon, for right away the whole pass was 
choked with buffalo as thick as they could crowd; 
jammed in closer than steers in a stock car. 

“I was ridin’ a fool bronc, and he got to rearin’ and 
pitchin’, and the first thing I knowed, we was rollin’ 
down the hill together. Well, the hoss turned three or 
four cats in the air, and first he was on top and then 
I was, but the critter lit feet down right on top of the 
backs of them buffalo; and I was still in the saddle and 
didn’t have no bones broke. Don’t ask me whether 
I pulled leather or not, Lanky; don’t ask me that. 

“Well, them brutes begun to run, and the first thing 
I knowed they was in a regular stampede. I seen what 
was happenin’. They was carryin’ me and that hoss 
north jest as fast as they could run, which was purty 
fast. Yes, sir, purty fast. 


By the Breadth of a Hair 


55 


“I reins the hoss around and turns him south and 
digs his sides with the rowels; and he runs toward the 
south jest as fast as he could—and he was a right pert 
pony, too. 

“Well, sir, I rides and I rides, all the time keepin’ 
my eye peeled for the tail-end of the herd. But I sees 
nothin’ but buffalo, miles and miles of ’em. 

“It was* about the middle of the mornin’ when my 
hoss fell off with me like that, and an hour by sun 
I was still ridin’ all the time looking for the end of the 
herd and thinkin’ it shorely would come some time. 
I happened to look to the side, and what do you think 
I seen, Lanky? What do you think I seen?’’ 

“Help coming, I suppose,” said Lanky. 

“No sech luck,” said Joe; “no sech luck. It was the 
bushes we broke and the rocks we turned over when 
me and that hoss rolled down the hill. 

“Well, I rides another half hour, I guess, and I 
begins to feel the hoss quiver and shake under me, and 
I knowed the jig was about up. When a hoss does that 
way, Lanky, he’s about ready to drop dead, and I 
knowed that might happen any time. 

“Purty soon I sees an openin’, and jest as that pony 
jumped off the rump of the last buffalo, damn me if he 
didn’t drop in his tracks, dead as a hammer. I knowed 
that was goin’ to happen when I felt him quiver. 

“Well, I climbed out on the hill afoot, forgittin’ to 
git my saddle; and damn lucky it was I forgot, too; 
for as soon as I got to the top of the hill and set down 
on a rock to rest, I looked back, and there was the 


56 Tall Tales from Texas 

main herd cornin’ into sight, roarin’ and bellowin’ like 
a cyclone. 

“I had to walk back to my outfit; and several days 
later, I rode back to the pass, but all I found of that 
hoss and saddle was a little greasy spot on the ground.” 

“That was a narrow escape,” said Lanky. “I suspect 
you have had as many close calls as anybody.” 

“Well, I couldn’t say about that,” said Joe. “But 
I know that if that hoss had give out ten minutes 
sooner, Joe Martin wouldn’t be settin’ here talkin’ to 
you tonight.” 

“Yeah,” said Hank. “Joe always was a lucky cuss. 
If he was to fall in a sewer, he’d come out with a lily 
in each hand. Now, me, I was born too late. Land all 
took up, buffalo all gone; no more trail drivin’ up 
north. Still, what with reptiles and beasts and Mexico 
steers and buckin’ hosses, and the like, I’ve had my 
share of close calls. 

“Funny how some little thing you don’t expect jest 
as like as not comes along and takes you off.” 

“Nothin’ ain’t got you yet, Hank,” said Red. 
“You’re here, ain’t you? What you kickin’ about?” 

“I was jest thinkin’ how near I come to bein’ kilt 
once. And if it hadn’t of been for Zac Weber, I would 
of been. 

“That lad could handle a six-gun, I can tell you. 
I’ve seen him knock down six flyin’ quail with his old 
Colt forty-five, ridin’ at a high run. He could turn six 
pigeons loose at one time and knock ’em every one 
down before they could git away. When he went duck 
huntin’ he never packed anything but his old six- 


By the Breadth of a Hair 


57 


shooter. Some of the boys had shot-guns, but Zac said 
his conscience never would git over it if he turned one 
of them murderous implements loose on a pore helpless 
fowl. And he never shot a duck on the water, either. 
Not Zac. Mighty glad I was that he could shoot like 
that, too, for he saved my life.” 

“Bandit trouble?” asked Lanky. 

“Naw, worse,” said Hank, “though I could tell you 
something about Glen Springs, but that’s not the time 
Zac saved my life. 

“Have you ever seen a centipede, Lanky?” 

“No,” said Lanky; “I don’t suppose I have.” 

“Well, I’ll tell you what they look like so as you’ll 
know ’em. And don’t ketch ’em for playthings, Lanky, 
don’t ketch ’em for playthings. Jest as well pet a rattle¬ 
snake. They’re flat yeller worms with a hundred legs, 
like fringe on each side, and on every foot there’s 
a little hook that the centipede can hook into things that 
he walks on. And them hooks is so pizenous that if he 
walks across your skin while he’s mad, your flesh 
will putrefy, and you’ll go as crazy as a locoed hoss, 
and like as not take to the bushes like a jackrabbit 
unless somebody holds you. That’s how pizenous 
they are. 

“Well, what I started out to tell you was, one time 
at dinner me and Zac was settin’ on the ground about 
fifty feet apart facin’ each other eatin’ our beans and 
sow-belly. All at once I got a glimpse of somethin’ like 
a yellow streak runnin’ up my vest on my bandanner, 
but I jest barely did git a glimpse and couldn’t tell 
what it was. 


58 


Tall Tales from Texas 


“ ‘Is there somethin’ on my neck?’ I says to Zac. 

“ ‘Good God, man!’ says Zac. ‘It’s a centipede !’ 

“Well, we’d took off our gloves to eat, and I knowed 
if I tried to knock the critter off, I’d jest made him 
mad, and he’d git me shore. And I knowed if Zac 
come over to knock him off with a stick or somethin’, 
he’d be dead certain to chase him off on my neck. 

“ ‘Let him alone,’ I says, ‘and maybe he’ll crawl off 
after while.’ 

“ ‘Jest be still,’ says Zac. And he whips out his old 
six-shooter, and I hears the bullet whistle by my ear. 

“ ‘I got him,’ says Zac. 

“And I takes off my bandanner, and there is jest 
a little speck where the bullet had jest barely teched 
it. I always did feel grateful to Zac after that, for he 
shore did save my life that day.’’ 

“You think, then, that if the centipede had touched 
your skin, he would really have killed you?’’ asked 
Lanky. 

“I don’t think nothin’ about it,” said Hank. “I know 
it. Why, I tell you what happened. You see, Zac didn’t 
have time to look what was on the other side of me 
when he shot, but jest as he pulled the trigger, he 
noticed an old cow-brute standin’ about fifty yards 
off chewin’ his cud. Well, this old steer jumped, so Zac 
said he must of hit him. Still we couldn’t see no wound 
on him. We roped him and looked at the critter close 
and found a bullet hole in his dew-lap.” 

“In his what?” asked Lanky. 

“Why, in his dew-lap,” said Hank. “That’s the 
grissle thing that hangs down from the neck of a cow- 


By the Breadth of a Hair 59 

brute jest where it joins on to the breast. They used 
to vaccinate for the black-leg by makin’ a hole in it. 
We knowed the steer couldn't be hurt much there; so 
we turns him loose, and he gits up, and starts off. 

“He hadn't gone more than twenty steps, when his 
neck was all swole up, big as a saddle-hoss. Then he 
begin to rave and charge and beller so pitifully that we 
jest shot him to git him out of his misery. 

“That's how pizenous them centipedes are. When I 
saw that pore brute all swole up and out of his head 
with torment, I knowed what a close call I'd had.’’ 

Lanky’s attention had been divided between Red 
and the narrator. He had glanced several times at Joe 
also, who was sitting complacent, but not contempt¬ 
uous, listening with the respect due a good liar even 
though a comparatively inexperienced one. But Red. 
during the first part of Hank’s narrative had been in 
a deep study. He rolled several cigarettes, only to throw 
them away after taking a puff or two. He appeared 
to listen; yet it was obvious that the narrator did not 
have his full attention. Near the climax to Hank’s tale, 
however, his countenance brightened up, and from that 
time he sat quietly as one having an ace in the hole. 
When Hank finished, he was ready. 

“I didn’t have no crack shot, nor no friend of no 
kind to help me out once when I come near passin’ in 
my checks out in the Glass Mountains. 

“I never did know what was the matter with that 
fool hoss I was ridin’. He’d always been a mighty 
sensible animal—fine cow-pony, quarter hoss, single¬ 
footer, and the best night hoss on the outfit. I’d rode 


Tall Tales from Texas 


60 

him hard that day, and I thought maybe he was tired 
of life and took a sudden notion to kill his self like an 
English feller that come to our outfit and stayed a 
while once. Then, again, I thought he might of went 
blind all at once. I never could figger it out. Anyway, 
he never acted like that before.” 

“What did he do?” asked Lanky. 

“What did he do? He done a plenty. Still I don’t 
blame him, pore brute. There must have been somethin’ 
the matter. 

“You see, I was ridin’ back to the headquarters on 
a dark night. I was about half asleep, for I knowed 
that old Frijole—that was his name—would find the 
way. He always could. Well, I was ridin’ along that 
way, when all of a sudden I finds us. both failin’ down 
through empty space. Seemed like we never would hit 
the ground, and before we got bottom, I figgered out 
what had happened. 

“Out in the edge of the Glass Mountains there was 
a big sink-hole right out on the mesa. It was as big 
across as a house, and six lariats deep right straight 
down—we afterwards measured it—and Frijole had 
loped off into that dang hole with me, and there we 
was makin’ for the bottom. 

“I thinks to myself, ‘This is where you pass in your 
checks, Red. Some gits it early and some gits it late, 
but they all gits it.’ Then we hits bottom. 

“I guess I was shook up purty bad, for I woke up 
after while, and there I was settin’ on a dead hoss. You 
see, Frijole had broke his neck landin’, pore feller. 
I always will wonder what was a eatin’ on him to make 


By the Breadth of a Hair 61 

him lope off into a hole like that. Must of been 
somethin*. 

“Well, I seen there wasn't nothin* I could do but 
wait for daylight and then try to figure out some way 
to git out; so I jist laid down and took a nap till 
mornin*. 

“When daylight come, I got up and looked around, 
but the walls was straight up and down, and there 
wasn't nothin’ I could git a-holt of to climb out. Then 
I took the rope off my saddle and begun to look for 
somethin’ twenty feet or so up that I could rope, 
thinkin’ I could pull myself up that far, and then 
maybe rope somethin’ else a little higher up, and pull 
myself un again, and so on till I was out. 

“But there wasn’t a thing, Lanky, not a bush nor 
a rock, nor nothin’ stickin* out T could git a loon on. 
Everything as slick as glass. ‘Well, maybe the bow? 
will come and hunt me,’ I thinks, ‘but how in the hell 
will they know to look down in here?* 

“I waited all day, and not a soul come: and I waited 
all the next day, and still nobody come. The third d^v 
I was still there and no better off than I was in the 
beginnin*. 

“Bv that time I was wishin* T was dead, for T had 
drti«k uo all the water in my saddle canteen, and I was 
gittin’ hungry, too.” 

“Couldn’t you have eaten some of the horse meat?” 
asked Lanky. 

“Yes, I guess I could of,” said Bed, “but at first T 
wouldn’t out of friendship for the brute—for even if 
he did git me in there, I always figgered there was 


62 


Tall Tales from Texas 


somethin’ wrong; he went out of his head or somethin’ 
—and after I got hungry enough to of et him, anyway, 
his carcass had spoiled and was stinkin’ somethin’ 
terrible. That’s principally what made it so bad. Every 
breath I drawed was misery. 

“Finally I says, ‘Red, you can’t stand this no longer. 
You’d shoot a pore dumb brute if you saw him in 
torment like this.’ And so I cocks my six-shooter and 
holds it to my head, but somehow I can’t pull the 
trigger. ‘Stand it a little while longer,’ I says to my¬ 
self, ‘and if help don’t come, shoot.’ I done that three 
or four times, I guess. 

“After a while buzzards begun flyin’ over the hole— 
dozens of ’em sailin’ round and round. They knowed 
there was somethin’ dead somewheres around, but they 
was havin’ trouble locatin’ it. They kept cornin’ lower 
and lower, till directly one comes down into the sink¬ 
hole. Then some more come, and they would fly right 
down close to me. ‘I reckon you come after Frijole,’ I 
says, ‘but jist wait a little while and you can have me 
too.’ 

“And jist then I had an idear. I picks up my lariat 
right quiet-like and begins unravelin’ it into little 
strands. In each little strand I tied a noose. Then I takes 
my seat by the side of the carcass and jist waits. 
Directly a big turkey buzzard comes right down close, 
and I throws a loop over his head and fetches him 
down. Then I stakes him to my belt, givin’ him about 
six foot of rope. After a while I gits another one. 
I keeps on until I gits twenty of the vultures staked 


By the Breadth of a Hair 


63 



“Well, sir, them birds jist noturallv lifted me right out of 

that sink-hole.” 




































64 Tall Tales from Texas 

to my belt; then I fires off my six-shooter, scerin* ’em 
all at once. 

“Well, sir, them birds jist naturally lifted me right 
out of that sink-hole.” 

“You were lucky,” said Lanky. 

“Lucky! Lad, that wasn’t luck; that was head work. 
You ain’t heard about my luck yet. Them buzzards 
be,<nm flyin’ away with me, but I seen what direction 
they was goin’, and I jist let ’em alone and watched 
the lay of the land. And when they had me right over 
a big hav-stack at the headquarters of my own outfit, 
I reached down and unbuckled my belt, and damn me, 
if I didn’t land right on the hay without any hurtin’ 
a-tall. 

“I walked up to the house and had a square meal— 
and I et, too, I’ll tell you—and then I felt as fresh and 
pert as ever.” 

“That was a lucky landing,” said Lanky. 

“It shore was,” said Red. “I got off light. The worst 
thing about it was that them vultures carried off my 
belt; and a cracker-jack it was, too, trimmed with 
rattlesnake hide and gold studs. Twenty-eight dollars 
and fifty cents it cost me over the counter at K. C., 
Misourey.” 

Lanky expected Joe to tell the next story, but the 
veteran smoked placidly, and graciously surrendered 
his turn to Hank. 

“A thing like that nearly happened to me once,” said 
Hank, “except it was a canyon instead of a sink hole. 

“I ought to of had more sense than to ride a fool 
bronc like the critter I was on around a place like that, 


By the Breadth of a Hair 


65 


but I was green in them days. You see I was ridin’ 
around a rimrock, lookin’ out for steers in the canyon 
down below, and down below it was, shore-nuff—five 
hundred feet straight down—jest as straight as a wall. 

“Well, I’d rode along that way for a while, when 
suddenly I took a fool notion to smoke. So I rolled 
me a fat tamale, and pulled out a match and struck it 
on my saddle-horn. 

“Jest then that fool bronc bogged his head and 
begun pitchin’ and bawlin’ like six-bits, and the next 
thing I knowed he’d fell off that rim-rock. And it was 
five hundred feet to the bottom if it was an inch. When 
that hoss hit the bottom, he jest naturally spattered 
all over the scenery.” 

“And you?” asked Lanky. 

“Well, you see,” said Hank, “when we went off that 
rim-rock together, I knowed that that saddle that I had 
been try in’ so hard to stay in was no place for me 
then; so I got off; and I had to be damn quick about 
it, too. I wasn’t much more than off the brute when 
he hit the bottom.” 

Lanky expected Joe to send him off to bed. There 
were cattle to gather during the day and to hold at 
night until all the pastures should be worked, and it 
was Joe who usually reminded the unseasoned boy that 
sleep was necessary, even if Lanky preferred the 
romancing of the older hands. 

But Joe merely chunked up the fire. 

“That puts me in mind,” said he, “of a hunt I went 
on once in the Guadalupe Mountains. You see, we was 
out after big-horn sheep—used to be lots of ’em up 


66 


Tall Tales from Texas 


there, but they are ’bout all gone now. Few up in the 
mountains where the tin-horn hunters never go. 

“I was follerin’ some of them critters around a ledge, 
and presently I looked around and seen where I was. 
The ledge was jest about a foot wide; and I looked 
down, and there was a bluff right straight down for 
five hundred feet, and I looked up, and there was a wall 
five hundred feet straight up. There wasn’t no way to 
git off that ledge but to go on or to turn back like I 
come, and in some places the footin’ was mighty 
ticklish, mighty ticklish. 

'‘Well, I walked along till I come to a slick place, 
and my foot slipped, and I had to let go my gun to 
keep from failin’. I shore hated to lose that thirty- 
thirty, too, for we had been friends for years, and 
many a deer and antelope and bear and panther I had 
fetched down with it. But I jest naturally lost my 
balance and had to let her go to save my neck. 

“Well, not havin’ any gun, I thought I had jest as 
well go back to the camp; so I started back like I come. 
I goes around a little bend, and there comes a mountain 
lion, a-creepin’ along towards me, jest like a cat tryin’ 
to slip up on a snow-bird. 

“Says I, ‘Joe, this ain’t no place for you. I expect 
you’d better go on the way you first started/ 

“So I turns around and goes back around the bend. 
When I gits about a hundred yards, there I sees a big 
grizzly bear cornin’ to meet me! and when he sees me, 
he sets up and shows his teeth and growls. 

“Says I, ‘Joe, maybe you’d better go back the other 
way, after all.’ I thought maybe the cougar would be 
gone. But as soon as I gits turned around—and I had 


By the Breadth of a Hair 67 

to be mighty careful in turnin’, for the ledge was 
powerfully narrow—when I turns around, I sees the 
big cat sneakin’ along toward me. And when I look the 
other way, there comes the bear. And they are both 
gittin’ closer and closer, and there I am, and it’s five 
hundred feet straight down, and it’s five hundred feet 
straight up.” 

“How did you get off?” asked Lanky. 

“How did I git off? Why, I couldn’t git off. They 
got me, but whether it was the bear or the cougar, I 
never did know.” 

Joe finished with a flourish but without a smile. 

He pulled out his watch. “Doggone,” he said, “I 
never had no idear it was so late. We ought to of been 
asleep before now. Lanky, you ought not to let these 
boys keep you up so late. They’d talk you to death 
if you’d jest set here and listen to ’em.” 


THE GENESIS OF PECOS BILL 


“I suppose/' said Lanky, as he sat by the camp-fire 
with Red and Hank and Joe, now his fast friends, 
“that the cowboy’s life is about the most interesting 
one there is. I’d like it. Live outdoors, plenty of fresh 
air to breathe, interesting work—that’s the life.” 

“I ain’t kickin’,” said Joe. “You see I’m still at it, 
though I’ve cussed it as much as anybody in my time, 
and swore off and quit, too, more than once. But some¬ 
how when spring comes, and the grass gits green, and 
I know the calves is cornin’, somethin’ jest naturally 
gits under my hide, and I come back to the smell of 
burnt hair and the creak of saddle-leather.” 

“Yeah,” said Red, “it’s jist like a dream I had once. 
I dreamt I died and went up to a place where there was 
big pearly gates, and I walked up and knocked on the 
door, and it come wide open. I went in, and there stood 
Saint Peter. 

“ ‘Come in; welcome to our city/ he says. ‘I’ve been 
lookin’ for you. Go over to the commissary and git 
you a harp and a pair of wings/ 

“ ‘All right,’ says I, feelin’ mighty lucky to git in. 

“As I walked along on the gold sidewalk, I sees 
a lot of fellers roped and hobbled and hog-tied. 

“‘What’s the matter?’ says I; ‘Saint Peter, you’re 
not tryin’ to buffalo me, are you ?’ 

“ ‘Naw,’ he says, ‘what makes you think so? Your 
record ain’t nothin’ extra good, but you didn’t git cut 

68 


The Genesis of Pecos Bill 69 

back, did you? Here you are. You’re in. Ain’t that 
enough ?’ 

“ ‘Ain’t this hell ?’ I says. 

“ ‘Naw’, says Peter, ‘this ain’t hell a-tall.’ 

“ ‘Are you shore this ain’t hell?’ I asks. 

“ ‘Naw,’ he says, “this ain’t hell. What makes you 
think it is?’ 

“ ‘Why,’ I says, ‘what you got all them fellers roped 
and tied down for?’ 

“ ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘them fellers over there? You see 
them’s cowboys from the Southwest, and I have to 
keep ’em tied to keep ’em from goin’ back. I think 
maybe they’ll git range broke after while so I can 
turn ’em loose, but it seems like it’s takin’ a long 
time.’ ” 

“However,” said Joe, “the cow business ain’t what 
it used to be, what with barbed wire, windmills, auto¬ 
mobiles and trucks, and the like. They don’t want cow¬ 
hands any more; what they want is blacksmiths, 
mechanics, and the like. Still, I reckon it’s a good 
thing, for they couldn’t git cowhands if they did want 
’em. 

“Now, here’s Red and Hank. Good boys, both of ’em. 
And I’ve learned ’em a lot about cattle; and they take 
money at the rodeos, but they ain’t like the old cow¬ 
hands. I don’t know jest what it is, but they ain’t 
the same. 

“And they ain’t but mighty few real cowmen any 
more. Now, take the big mogul of this outfit. Good 
feller, always pays wages every month—which is more 
than some of the old-timers could do. But he ain’t no 


70 


Tall Tales from Texas 


cowman. Sets up all day at a big desk in town—has 
a secretary, stenographer, and the like. Why, if Pecos 
Bill had a-done a thing like that, he would of been so 
ashamed of his self, he would of jest naturally laid 
down and died.” 

“Who is this Pecos Bill Pve heard you mention?” 
asked Lanky. 

“Who is he? Why, ain’t you ever heard of Pecos 
Bill?” 

“Not till I came here.” 

“Well, well, I reckon you’ve heard of Sam Houston, 
and Sam Bass and General Lee and George Wash¬ 
ington and Pat Garrett, ain’t you?” 

“Oh, yes, I’ve heard a little about them but not any¬ 
thing about Pecos Bill.” 

“That jest shows that the fellers that make our 
books don’t know what to put in ’em. The idear of 
leavin’ out Pecos Bill.” 

“But who was Pecos Bill?” 

“Who was he? Why, he was jest about the most 
celebrated man in the whole dang cow country.” 

“What was his real name?” 

“So far as I know the only real name he ever had 
was Pecos Bill. Don’t suppose anybody knows what 
his daddy’s name was. You see, in his day it wasn’t 
good manners to ask a feller his name, and besides it 
wasn’t good judgment either. And it ain’t been so long. 
Many a greenhorn bein’ ignorant of that little point 
of good manners has looked down the muzzle of a 
six-shooter and then died. 

“Pecos Bill’s daddy didn’t say what they called him 


The Genesis of Pecos Bill 


71 


back in the States, and nobody asked him. They jest 
called him the Ole Man, for he was old—about seventy 
some odd when he came to Texas.” 

“When did he come to Texas?” asked Lanky. 

“I couldn’t say about that exactly,” said Joe. “It 
must of been right about the time Sam Houston 
discovered Texas. Anyhow, the Ole Man loaded up 
all his twelve kids and his Ole Woman and his rifle, 
and all his other stuff in an oxwagon and lit out hell¬ 
bent for Texas as soon as he found out there was sech 
a place. They say other people that come later didn’t 
have no trouble findin’ the way. They jest went by the 
Indian skeletons that the Ole Man left along his road. 

“Well, they finally got to the Sabine River. The 
Ole Man stops his oxen, old Spot and Buck, he calls 
’em, and rounds up all his younguns and has ’em set 
down and listen while he makes ’em a speech. ‘Young¬ 
uns,’ he says, ‘that land you see on the other side of 
the river is Texas, wild and woolly and full of fleas. 
And if you ain’t that way only more so, you ain’t no 
brats of mine.’ ” 

“I’d always heard that Pecos Bill was born in 
Texas,” interrupted Red. 

“Jest wait,” said Joe. “Jest wait; have I said he 
wasn’t? Them was the other kids. 

“As I was about to say, they crossed the river and 
camped for the night. That was in Texas, savvy. And 
that night Pecos Bill was born. The next mornin’ the 
Ole Woman put him on a bear’s skin and left him to 
play with his self while she made the corn-pone for 


72 


Tall Tales from Texas 


breakfast. And right then’s when they come dang near 
losin’ Pecos Bill. 

“Bears or Indians?” asked Lanky. 

“Neither one,” said Joe. “Bears and Indians didn’t 
mean nothin’ to that old man. He would have et ’em 
for breakfast. Once later when the Ole Man and the 
older brats was gone, the Comanches did try to git 
Bill, but the Ole Woman lit into ’em with the broom- 
handle and killed forty-nine right on the spot. She 
never knowed how many she crippled and let git away. 
No, it wasn’t the Indians. It was miskeeters.” 

“Malaria?” said Lanky. 

“You guessed wrong again,” said Joe. “This is what 
happened. The Ole Woman was cookin’ corn-pone, 
and all of a sudden it got dark, and there was the 
dangest singin’ and hummin’ you ever heard. Then 
they seen it was a swarm of big black miskeeters; and 
they was so thick around Bill that you jest couldn’t 
see him. 

“The Ole Man felt his way to the wagon and got 
out his gun. He thought he’d shoot it off in the air and 
scere them miskeeters away. He pointed the muzzle 
of the gun toward the sky and pulled the trigger. What 
he seen then was a little beam of light come through. It 
was jest like bein’ in a dark room and lookin’ out 
through a piece of windmill pipe. That was jest for 
a minute, for right away the hole shet up, and them 
miskeeters swarmed around Pecos, and the Ole Man 
seen they was goin’ to pack him off if he didn’t do 
somethin’ right away. 

“Then he happened to recollect that he’d brought 


The Genesis of Pecos Bill 73 

his hog-renderin’ kettle along; so he fought his way 
back to the wagon and rolled it out and turned it over 
the kid. He was scered the lad would git lonesome 
under there by his self, so he jest slipped the choppin’ 
axe under the edge of the kettle for the chap to play 
with. 

“Well, them danged miskeeters jest buzzed and 
buzzed around the kettle, tryin’ to find a way to git in. 
D’rec’ly they all backed off, and the Old Man and the 
Ole Woman thought they’d give up and was goin’ 
away. Then all at once one of them miskeeters comes 
at that kettle like a bat out of hell. He hit the kettle 
and rammed his bill clean through it; and he stuck 
there. Then another one come at the kettle jest like 
the first one had; and he stuck, too. Then they kept 
cornin’, and every one stuck. The Ole Man and the 
Ole Woman and the older brats stood there watchin’ 
them miskeeters ram that kettle. After each one of 
them varmints (they was too big to be called insects) 
hit the kettle, there would be a little ring— ding! like 
that. Purty soon the old folks got on to what was 
happenin’. Every time a miskeeter would ram his bill 
through the kettle, Pecos would brad it with the 
choppin’ axe. Well, after while them miskeeters jest 
naturally lifted that kettle right up and flew off with 
it. The others thought they had Pecos Bill and follered 
the kettle off. Of course the Ole Man hated to lose his 
utensil. He said he didn’t know how the Ole Woman 
was goin’ to render up the lard and bear’s grease now; 
but it was worth a hundred kettles to know he had 
such a smart brat. And from that time the Ole Man 


74 


Tall Tales from Texas 


would always talk about Bill as a chap of Great Possi¬ 
bilities. He ’lowed that if the brat jest had the proper 
raisin’, he’d make a great man some day. He said he 
was goin’ to try to do his part by him; so he begun 
givin’ him a diet of jerked game with whiskey and 
onions for breakfast. He lapped it up so well that in 
three days the Ole Woman weaned him.” 

“Did the Ole Man settle there on the Sabine?” asked 
Lanky. 

“Naw,” said Joe. “He squatted on a little sandy hill 
on the Trinity somewheres east of where Dallas is now. 
It was jest an accident that he stopped where he did.” 

“How was that?” asked Lanky. 

“Well,” said Joe, “you see, it was like this. They 
was travelin’ west in their customary and habitual 
manner, which was with the Ole Man and the six 
oldest kids walkin’ alongside Spot and Buck, and the 
Ole Woman and the seven youngest kids in the wagon. 
Jest as they was cornin’ to the foot of a sandy hill, a big 
rain come up. It rained so hard that the Ole Man 
couldn’t see the wagon, but he stuck close to them 
trusty oxen of his, and they went right up the hill. 
When he got to the top, he seen that it had about quit 
rainin’; and he looked back and seen the wagon still 
at the bottom of the hill, and there was the brats that 
had been walkin’ with him under it.” 

“Did the harness break?” asked Lanky. 

“Naw, it wasn’t that,” said Joe. “You see, he was 
usin’ a rawhide lariat for a log-chain, and it had got 
wet. I reckon you know what rawhide does when it 
gits wet, don’t you, Lanky? It stretches. There ain’t 


The Genesis of Pecos Bill 


75 


no rubber that will stretch like wet rawhide. Well, 
that’s what happened to that lariat. It stretched so that 
the Ole Man drove his oxen a mile up the hill without 
movin’ the wagon an inch. Not an inch had he moved 
her, by gar. 

“Well, the sun was shinin’ now, and it got brighter 
and brighter, and while the Ole Man was wonderin’ 
what in the dickens to do next. Ole Spot jest dropped 
down dead from sunstroke. That sort of got next to 
the Ole Man, for he said that brute had been a real 
friend to him, and besides he was worth his weight 
in gold. Still, he ’lowed he’d might as well skin him. 
So he got out his old Bowie knife and started to work. 

“Well, sir, while he was skinnin’ Spot, a norther 
came up, and damn me, if Ole Buck didn’t keel over, 
froze to death. 

“So the Ole Man decided he’d jest as well stop 
there where he was. So he told the Ole Woman to 
bring up the brats. He throwed the ox yoke over a 
stump; and the Ole Woman brought up some chuck 
and some beddin’ from the wagon. Then they et sup¬ 
per and tucked the kids into bed. The Ole Man tried 
to blow out the lantern, but she wouldn’t blow. He 
raised up the globe, and there was the flame froze stiff 
as an icicle. He jest broke it off and buried it in the 
sand and turned in and went to sleep. 

“The next mornin’ when he woke up, it was clear 
and the sun was warm. Well, the Ole Woman cooked 
a bite, and while they was eatin’, here come the wagon 
right up the hill. You see the rawhide was dryin’ out. 
That’s the way it does.” 


76 


Tall Tales from Texas 


“That’s what it does, all right,” said Red. “Once I 
knowed a clod-hopper that made his self a rawhide 
hat. It worked fine till one day he got caught out in 
the rain. Then the sun come out, and that hat drawed 
up so he couldn’t git it off. And it was drawin’ up and 
mashin’ his head somethin’ terrible. Lucky for him, 
it wasn’t very far to a tank, and he got off and stood 
on his head in the water a few minutes and it come 
right off.” 

“Well,” said Joe, “that’s what the rawhide log-chain 
done. It dried out, and that wagon come right up the 
hill; and when it got up to where the Ole Man and the 
Ole Woman was, the Ole Man got his choppin’ axe 
and begun cuttin’ down trees to make him a cabin. And 
that’s where he settled.” 

“Did Pecos Bill grow up there in East Texas?” 
asked Lanky. 

“He left when he was a mere lad,” said Joe. “But 
he lived there a little while. The Ole Man got along 
fine till his corn give out, because there was plenty 
of game. But he jest couldn’t do without his corn-pone 
and his corn whiskey. So he cleared a little patch and 
put it in corn.” 

“And worked it without his steers?” asked Lanky. 

“Why not?” said Joe. “He made him a light 
Georgie-stock out of wood, and the Ole Woman and 
one of the bigger kids could pull it fine. He made some 
harness out of the hide of Old Spot, and he’d hitch ’em 
and plough all day. 

“They used to all go out in the field and leave Pecos 
Bill in the cabin by his self. One day when Bill was 


The Genesis of Pecos Bill 


77 


about three years old, the Ole Man was ploughin’, and 
jest as he turned the Ole Woman and the kid he had 
hitched up with her around to start a new row, the Ole 
Woman begun yellin’ and tryin’ to get out of the 
harness. 

“ ‘What’s eatin’ on you, Ole Woman?’ says the Ole 
Man. ‘I never seen you do like this before. Must have 
a tick in your ear.’ 

“The Ole Woman yelled that she seen a panther go 
in the cabin where Bill was. 

“The Ole Man told her not to git excited. ‘It’s a 
half hour by sun till dinner time yet,’ he says, ‘and that 
dang panther needn’t expect no help from me nohow. 
The fool critter ought to of had more sense than to go 
in there. He’ll jest have to make out the best way he 
can.’ 

“So they ploughed on till dinner time, and when they 
come back to the cabin, there was Pecos Bill a-chewin’ 
on a piece of raw panther flank. 

“They lived there another year or two before the 
Ole Man taken a notion to leave.” 

“I reckon you know how he come to git the idear 
in his head, don’t you, Joe?” said Red. 

“I’ll bite,” said Joe. “Go ahead.” 

“Why, this ain’t no sell,” said Red. “I’ve heard 
Windy Williams tell it a hundred times. 

“One time the Ole Man had the Ole Woman and 
one of the big kids hitched up to the plough in his 
customary and habitual manner, jist as Joe has been 
tellin’ about, and all at once here comes a piece of 
paper blowin’ across the field. The Ole Woman shied 


78 


Tall Tales from Texas 


a little bit off to one side; then the kid got to prancin’, 
and then they tore loose and went lickity-split, rearin’ 
and tearin’ across that corn patch, draggin’ the Ole 
Man with ’em. The Ole Man stumped his toe on a root, 
and then they got loose from him and tore up the 
Georgie-stock. After while they quieted down, and the 
Ole Man got up and fetched ’em in. Then he went out 
and picked up the piece of paper where it was hung 
on a stump. He seen it was an old newspaper. That set 
him to wonderin’. 

“The next mornin’ he got his rifle and begun lookin’ 
around. About five miles from his place he found some 
wagon tracks, and he follered the tracks till he come 
to a new cabin about fifty miles up the creek. Then 
he come home and told the Ole Woman and the kids 
to git ready to leave. He calkilated the country was 
gittin’ too thickly settled for him.” 

“How did he get away without a team?” asked 
Lanky. 

“Oh, that was easy,” said Red. “He sent Pecos Bill 
out to ketch a couple of mustangs, and in about an 
hour the lad run ’em down. The Ole Man fixed up the 
harness he’d been usin’ to plough with, and loaded in 
his stuff and his wife and kids, and pulled out. 

“They kept goin’ west till finally they come to the 
Pecos River, which the Ole Man said he’d ford or 
bust. He got across all right, but as he was drivin’ 
up the bank on the west side, the end-gate come out 
of the wagon, and Pecos Bill fell out. The Ole Man 
and the Ole Woman never missed him till they got 
about thirty miles further on; then they said it wasn’t 


The Genesis of Pecos Bill 


79 


worth while turnin’ back. They said they guessed the 
chap could take kere of his self, and if he couldn’t he 
wasn’t worth turnin’ back for nohow. So that’s how 
Pecos Bill come to be called Pecos Bill.” 

“What became of him?” asked Lanky. “What 
happened to him then?” 

“What happened to him then?” said Red. “That 
would take a long time to tell.” 

“We’ll tell you about that some other time, Lanky,” 
said Joe. 


ADVENTURES OF PECOS BILL 


“How old was Pecos Bill when he was lost on the 
Pecos River?” Lanky asked Joe on the next night when 
supper was finished and the four were sitting around 
the fire smoking. 

“I guess he must of been about four year old,” said 
Joe. “Some says he was jest a year old, but that can’t 
be right. The Ole Man made two or three crops down 
on the Trinity before the country got so thickly 
settled that he had to leave.” 

“What became of the family?” asked Lanky. 

“That would be hard to answer,” said Joe; “hard 
to answer. I don’t suppose there’s a soul that knows 
for certain. There’s been tales about ’em bein’ et up 
by wild beasts, but that ain’t likely; and there’s been 
tales about ’em bein’ killed by the Indians, but that 
ain’t likely neither. Why, them Red-Skins would run 
like scered jack-rabbits when they seen the Ole Man 
cornin’, or the Ole Woman either. Then there’s tales 
about ’em dyin’ for water in the desert, which may 
be so; but more than likely they settled somewheres 
and lived a happy and peaceful life.” 

“The chances are,” said Red, “that they settled in 
the Lost Canyon, and their offspring may be livin’ 
there yet for all anybody knows.” 

“Where is the Lost Canyon?” asked Lanky. 

“That’s jist what nobody don’t know,” said Red; 
“but it’s out in the Big Bend Country somewheres, and 


80 


Adventures of Pecos Bill 


81 


it opens into the Rio Grande. It gits wide, and there’s 
springs in it, and buffalo a-grazin’ on the grass, and 
it’s a fine country.” 

“How do you know about it?” asked Lanky. “Have 
you ever been there?” 

“Naw,” said Red, “but people has. But you never 
can find it when you’re lookin’ for it. Them that finds 
it, finds it accidentally, and then they can’t go back. 
That’s jist the place that would of suited Pecos Bill’s 
Ole Man, and the chances are that’s where he stopped. 
Some day I’m goin’ to happen on that canyon myself, 
and if I do, I’ll jist stake me out a ranch; that is unless 
it’s inhabited by Pecos Bill’s race. If it is, I reckon 
I’ll let ’em have it.” 

“And what became of Pecos Bill?” asked Lanky. 

“Why,” said Joe, “he jest growed up with the 
country. There wasn’t nothin’ else he could do. He got 
to runnin’ with a bunch of coyotes and took up with 
’em. He learned their language and took up all their bad 
habits. He could set on the ground and howl with the 
best of ’em, and run down a jack-rabbit jest as quick, 
too. He used to run ahead of the pack and pull down 
a forty-eight point buck and bite a hole in his neck 
before the rest of the coyotes got there. But he always 
divided with the pack, and that’s probably the reason 
they throwed off on him like they did.” 

“Did he ever teach anybody else the coyote lan¬ 
guage?” asked Lanky 

“Jest one old prospector that befriended him once. 
That was all. You see the old man couldn’t find no 
gold and he went to trappin’, and he used the language 


82 


Tall Tales from Texas 


that Bill had taught him to call up the coyotes and 
git ’em in his traps. Bill said it was a dirty trick, and 
he wouldn’t teach nobody else how to speak coyote. 
Bill would of killed the old prospector if it hadn’t of 
been that the old man done him a favor once.” 

“What did he do?” asked Lanky. 

“Why, it was him that found Bill and brought him 
back to civilization and liquor, which Bill had jest 
about forgot the taste of.” 

“How old was Bill at that time?” asked Lanky. 

“Oh, I guess he was about ten years old,” said Joe. 
“One day this old prospector comes along and he hears 
the most terrible racket anybody ever heard of—rocks 
a-rollin’ down the canyon, brush a-poppin’, and the 
awfullest howlin’ and squallin’ you could imagine; and 
he looks up the canyon and sees what he first thinks 
is a cloud cornin’ up, but purty soon he discovers it’s 
fur a-flyin’. 

“Well, he decides to walk up the canyon a piece and 
investigate, and purty soon he comes on Pecos Bill, 
who has a big grizzly bear under each arm jest mortally 
squeezin’ the stuffin’ out of ’em. And while the old 
prospector stands there a-watchin’, Bill tears off a hind 
leg and begins eatin’ on it. 

“ ‘A game scrap, son,’ says the old prospector, ‘and 
who be ye?’ 

“ ‘Me?’ says Bill. ‘I’m a varmit.’ 

“ ‘Naw, ye ain’t a varmit,’ says the old prospector; 
‘you’re a human.’ 

“ ‘Naw,’ says Bill, ‘I ain’t no human; I’m a varmit.’ 

“ ‘How come?’ says the prospector. 


Adventures of Pecos Bill 


83 


“ ‘Don’t I go naked?’ says Bill. 

“ ‘Shore ye do,’ says the old Prospector. ‘Shore ye’re 
naked. So is the Indians, and them critters is part 
human, anyway. That don't spell nothin’.’ 

“ ‘Don’t I have fleas?’ says Bill. 

“ ‘Shore ye do,’ says the old prospector, ‘but all 
Texians has fleas.’ 

“ ‘Don’t I howl ?’ says Bill. 

“ ‘Yeah, ye howl all right,’ says the old prospector, 
‘but nearly all Texians is howlin’ most of the time. 
That don’t spell nothin’ neither.’ 

“ ‘Well, jest the same I’m a coyote,’ says Bill. 

“ ‘Naw, ye ain’t a coyote,’ says the old prospector. 
‘A coyote’s got a tail, ain’t he?’ 

“ ‘Yeah,’ says Bill, ‘a coyote’s got a tail.’ 

“ ‘But you ain’t got no tail,’ says the old prospector. 
‘Jest feel and see if you have.* 

“Bill felt and shore nuff, he didn’t have no tail. 

“ ‘Well, I’ll be danged,’ he says. ‘I never did notice 
that before. I guess I ain’t a coyote, after all. Show me 
them humans, and if I like their looks, maybe I’ll throw 
in with ’em.’ 

“Well, he showed Bill the way to an outfit, and it 
wasn’t long till he was the most famous and noted man 
in the whole cow country.” 

“It was him,” said Hank, “that invented ropin’. He 
had a rope that reached from the Rio Grande to the 
Big Bow, and he shore did swing a mean loop. He used 
to amuse his self by thro win’ a little Julian 1 up in the 


J A type of loop. Pronounced hoolidn. 



84 Tall Tales from Texas 

sky and fetchin’ down the buzzards and eagles that flew 
over. He roped everything he ever seen: bears and 
wolves and panthers, elk and buffalo. The first time 
he seen a train, he thought it was some kind of varmit, 
and damn me if he didn’t sling a loop over it and 
dang near wreck the thing. 

“One time his ropin’ shore did come in handy, for 
he saved the life of a very dear friend.” 

“How was that?” asked Lanky. 

“Well, Bill had a hoss that he thought the world of, 
and he had a good reason to, too, for he had raised 
him from a colt, feedin’ him on a special diet of nitro¬ 
glycerin and barbed wire, which made him very tough 
and also very ornery when anybody tried to handle him 
but Bill. The hoss thought the world of Bill, but when 
anybody else come around, it was all off. He had more 
ways of pitchin’ than Carter had oats. Lots of men 
tried to ride him, but only one man besides Bill ever 
mounted that hoss and lived. That’s the reason Bill 
named him Widow-Maker.” 

“Who was that man?” asked Lanky. 

“That was Bill’s friend that I was goin’ to tell you 
about Bill savin’ his life,” said Hank. “You see this 
feller gits his heart set on ridin’ Widow-Maker. Bill 
tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen. He 
said he could ride anything that had hair. It had been 
his ambition from youth, he said, to find a critter that 
could make him pull leather. So Bill, seein’ the pore 
feller’s heart was about to break, finally told him to 
go ahead. 

“He gits on Widow-Maker, and that hoss begins 


Adventures of Pecos Bill 


85 



' Asettin’ on that tornado and as purrin’ it in the withers . 





86 


Tall Tales from Texas 


to go through his gaits, doin' the end-to-end, the sun- 
fish, and the back-throw; and about that time the rider 
goes up in the sky. Bill watches him through a spyglass 
and sees him land on Pike’s Peak. No doubt he would 
of starved to death up there, but Bill roped him by the 
neck and drug him down, thus savin’ his life.” 

“Yeah,” said Red, “Widow-Maker was jist the sort 
of hoss that suited Bill exactly. For one thing, it saved 
him a lot of shootin’, because he didn’t have no trouble 
keepin’ other people off his mount; and as for Bill, 
he could ride anything that had hair and some things 
that didn’t have. Once, jist for fun, he thro wed a sur¬ 
cingle on a streak of lightin’ and rode it over Pike’s 
Peak. 

“Another time he bet a Stetson hat he could ride 
a cyclone. He went up on the Kansas line and simply 
eared that tornado down and got on it. Down he come 
across Oklahoma and the Panhandle a-settin’ on that 
tornado, a-curlin’ his mustache and a-spurrin’ it in the 
withers. Seein’ it couldn’t throw him, it jist naturally 
rained out from under him, and that’s the way Bill 
got the only spill he ever had. 

“Yeah,” continued Red, “I reckon Bill was mighty 
hard to throw. A smart lad he was, and a playful sort 
of feller, too. In his spare time he used to amuse his 
self puttin’ thorns on things—bushes and cactuses and 
the like, and he even stuck horns on the toads so 
they’d match up with the rest of the country.” 

“I see he’s been at work in this country,” said 
Lanky. “Did he live all his life in Texas?” 

“Naw, he didn’t,” said Joe. “Bill was a good deal 


Adventures of Pecos Bill 


87 


like his old man. When he had killed all the Indians 
and bad men, and the country got all peaceful and quiet, 
he jest couldn’t stand it any longer, and he saddled up 
his hoss and started west. Out on the New Mexico 
line he met an old trapper, and they got to talkin’, and 
Bill told him why he was leavin’, and said if the old 
man knowed where there was a tough outfit, he’d be 
much obliged if he would tell him how to git to it. 

“ ‘Ride up the draw about two hundred miles,’ says 
the old traper, ‘and you’ll find a bunch of guys so tough 
that they bite nails in two jest for the fun of it.’ 

“So Bill rides on in a hurry, gittin’ somewhat reck¬ 
less on account of wantin’ to git to that outfit and git 
a look at the bad hombres that the old man has told 
him about. The first thing Bill knowed, his hoss 
stumps his toe on a mountain and breaks his fool neck 
rollin’ down the side, and so Bill finds his self afoot. 

“He takes off his saddle and goes walkin’ on, 
packin’ it, till all at once he comes to a big rattlesnake. 
He was twelve feet long and had fangs like the tushes 
of a javelina; and he rears up and sings at Bill and 
sticks out his tongue like he was lookin’ for a scrap. 
There wasn’t nothin’ that Bill wouldn’t fight, and he 
always fought fair; and jest to be shore that rattle¬ 
snake had a fair show and couldn’t claim he took 
advantage of him, Bill let him have three bites before 
he begun. Then he jest naturally lit into that reptile 
and mortally flailed the stuffin’ out of him. Bill was 
always quick to forgive, though, and let by-gones be 
by-gones, and when the snake give up, Bill took him 


88 


Tall Tales from Texas 


up and curled him around his neck, and picked up his 
saddle and outfit and went on his way. 

“As he was goin’ along through a canyon, all at 
once a big mountain lion jumped off of a cliff and 
spraddled out all over Bill. Bill never got excited. He 
jest took his time and laid down his saddle and his 
snake, and then he turned loose on that cougar. Well, 
sir, the hair flew so it rose up like a cloud and the jack- 
rabbits and road-runners thought it was sundown. It 
wasn’t long till that cougar had jest all he could stand, 
and he begun to lick Bill’s hand and cry like a kitten. 

“Well, Bill jest ears him down and slips his bridle 
on his head, throws on the saddle and cinches her 
tight, and mounts the beast. Well, that cat jest tears 
out across the mountains and canyons with Bill on his 
back a-spurrin’ him in the shoulders and quirtin’ him 
down the flank with the rattlesnake. 

“And that’s the way Bill rode into the camp of the 
outfit the old trapper had told him about. When he gits 
there, he reaches out and cheeks down the cougar and 
sets him on his haunches and gits down and looks at 
his saddle. 

“There was them tough hombres a-settin’ around the 
fire playin’ monte. There was a pot of coffee and a 
bucket of beans a-boilin’ on the fire, and as Bill hadn’t 
had nothin’ to eat for several days, he was hungry; 
so he stuck his hand down in the bucket and grabbed 
a handful of beans and crammed ’em into his mouth. 
Then he grabbed the coffee pot and washed ’em down, 
and wiped his mouth on a prickly-pear. Then he turned 


Adventures of Pecos Bill 


89 


to the men and said, ‘Who in the hell is boss around 
here, anyway ?' 

“ ‘I was/ says a big stout feller about seven feet 
tall, ‘but you are now, stranger/ 

“And that was the beginning of Bill's outfit." 

“But it was only the beginning," said Red; “for it 
wasn’t long after that that he staked out New Mexico 
and fenced Arizona for a calf-pasture. He built a big 
ranch-house and had a big yard around it. It was so 
far from the yard gate to the front door, that he used 
to keep a string of saddle hosses at stations along the 
way, for the convenience of visitors. Bill always was 
a hospitable sort of chap, and when company come, he 
always tried to persuade them to stay as long as he 
could git 'em to. Deputy sheriffs and brand inspectors 
he never would let leave a-tall. 

“One time his outfit was so big that he would have 
his cooks jist dam up a draw to mix the biscuit dough 
in. They would dump in the flour and the salt and the 
bakin’-powder and mix it up with teams and fresnoes. 
You can still see places where the dough was left in 
the bottom of the draw when they moved on. Alkali 
lakes they call ’em. That's the bakin’-powder that 
stayed in the ground. 

“One time when there was a big drought and water 
got scerce on Bill's range, he lit in and dug the Rio 
Grande and ditched water from the Gulf of Mexico. 
Old man Windy Williams was water boy on the job, 
and he said Bill shore drove his men hard for a few 
days till they got through, and it kept him busy 
carryin’ water." 


90 


Tall Tales from Texas 


“I guess it took about all of Bill’s time to manage 
a ranch like that,” said Lanky. 

“Not all, not all,” said Joe. “That was his main 
vocation and callin’, but he found time for a good 
many other things. He was always goin’ in for some¬ 
thin’ else when the cattle business got slack. 

“When the S. P. come through, he got a contract 
furnishin’ ’em wood. Bill went down into Mexico and 
rounded up a bunch of greasers and put ’em to cuttin’ 
wood. He made a contract with ’em that they was to 
git half the wood they cut. When the time was up, they 
all had big stacks of cordwood, Mex’can cords, you 
understand, that they don’t know what to do with. 
So Bill talked it over with ’em and finally agreed to 
take it off their hands without chargin’ ’em a cent. 
Bill always was liberal. 

“He done some of the gradin’ on the S. P. too. This 
time he went out and rounded up ten thousand badgers 
and put ’em to diggin’. He said they was better laborers 
than Chinks, because he could learn ’em how to work 
sooner. Bill had some trouble, however, gittin’ ’em to 
go in a straight line, and that’s why the S. P. is so 
crooked in places. 

“He also got a contract fencin’ the right-of-way. The 
first thing that he done was to go out on the line of 
Texas and New Mexico and buy up all the dry holes 
old Bob Sanford had made out there tryin’ to git 
water. He pulled ’em up and sawed ’em up into two- 
foot lengths for post-holes.” 

“I’ve heard that Paul Bunyan did that with dry oil- 
wells,” said Lanky. 


Adventures of Pecos Bill 


91 


“Paul Bunyan might of for all I know,” said Joe. 
“But if he did, he learned the trick from Pecos Bill, 
for this was before oil had been invented. 

“However, it cost so much to freight the holes 
down that Bill give up the plan long before he had 
used up all of Bob Sanford’s wells, and found a 
cheaper and better way of makin’ post-holes.” 

“What was his new method?” asked Lanky. 

“Why, he jest went out and rounded up a big bunch 
of prairie-dogs, and turned ’em loose where he wanted 
the fence, and of course every critter of ’em begun 
diggin’ a hole, for it’s jest a prairie-dog’s nature to dig 
holes. As soon as a prairie-dog would git down about 
two feet, Bill would yank him out and stick a post in 
the hole. Then the fool prairie-dog would go start 
another one, and Bill would git it. Bill said he found 
the prairie-dog labor very satisfactory. The only 
trouble was that sometimes durin’ off hours, the 
badgers that he had gradin’ would make a raid on the 
prairie-dogs, and Bill would have to git up and drive 
’em back to their own camp.” 

“Did Bill have any other occupations?” asked 
Lanky. 

“Well,” said Joe, “he used to fight Indians jest for 
recreation, but he never did make a business of it like 
some did, huntin’ ’em for a dollar a scalp. In fact Bill 
was not bloodthirsty and cruel, and he never scalped 
an Indian in his life. He’d jest skin ’em and tan their 
hides.” 

“That reminds me,” said Hank, “of another busi¬ 
ness he used to carry on as a sort of side-line, and that 


92 


Tall Tales from Texas 


was huntin’ buffalo. You sec, it was the hides that was 
valuable, and Bill thought it was too much of a waste 
to kill a buffalo jest for the hide; so he’d jest hold 
the critters and skin ’em alive and then turn ’em aloose 
to grow a new hide. A profitable business he built up, 
too, but he jest made one mistake.” 

“What was that?” asked Lanky. 

“One spring he skinned too early, and a norther 
come up, and all the buffalo took cold and died. Mighty 
few of ’em left after that.” 

“Did Bill ever get married?” asked Lanky. 

“Oh, yes,” said Joe. “He married lots of women in 
his day, but he never had the real tender affection for 
any of the rest of ’em that he had for his first wife, 
Slue-Foot Sue. 

“Bill savvied courtin’ the ladies all right; yet he 
never took much stock in petticoats till he met Slue- 
Foot Sue; but when he saw that gal come ridin’ down 
the Rio Grande on a catfish, it jest got next to him, 
and he married her right off. 

“I say right off—but she made him wait a few days 
till she could send to San Antonio for a suitable and 
proper outfit, the principal garment bein’ a big steel 
wire bustle, like all the women wore when they dressed 
up in them days. 

“Well, everything would have gone off fine, but on 
the very day of the weddin’ Sue took a fool notion into 
her head that she jest had to ride Widow-Maker. For 
a long time Bill wouldn’t hear to it, but finally she 
begun to cry, and said Bill didn’t love her any more. 


Adventures of Pecos Bill 


93 



That gal come ridin’ down the Rio Grande on a catfish 

































































94 


Tall Tales from Texas 


Bill jest couldn’t stand to see her cry; so he told her 
to go ahead but to be keerful. 

‘‘Well, she got on that hoss, and he give about two 
jumps, and she left the saddle. He throwed her so 
high that she had to duck as she went up to keep from 
bumpin’ her head on the moon. Then she come down, 
landin’ right on that steel bustle, and that made her 
bounce up jest as high, nearly, as she had went before. 
Well, she jest kept on bouncin’ like that for ten days 
and nights, and finally Bill had to shoot her to keep 
her from starvin’ to death. It nearly broke his heart. 
That was the only time Bill had ever been known to 
shed tears, and he was so tore up that he wouldn’t have 
nothin’ to do with a woman for two weeks. ,, 


THE EXODUS OF PECOS BILL 


Lanky had been sent for, and this was his last night 
in camp. His face was tanned; he had gained in weight; 
he had earned money in his own right. He felt that he 
was now a man. 

He and his cronies sat around the fire in silence. Joe 
and the boys would miss the kid, and he hated to leave. 
This silence wouldn’t do. 

“What became of Pecos Bill ?” asked Lanky. 

“That would be hard to say,” said Joe, “hard to say. 
Everybody knows he’s gone, jest like the open range 
and the longhorn steer; but jest how and where he 
passed in his checks, I don’t suppose anybody will ever 
find out for certain. A lot of the fellers that knowed 
him are dead, and a lot of ’em has bad memories— 
a lot of the old-timers has bad memories—and some of 
’em are sech damn liars that you can’t go by what 
they say.” 

“You’ve seen Pecos Bill, haven’t you, Joe?” said 
Lanky. 

“Well, yes, that is I seen him when I was a young 
buck. But I never seen him die, and I never could find 
out jest how he was took off. I’ve seen some mighty hot 
arguments on the subject, and I’ve knowed one or two 
fellers to die with their boots on after gittin’ in a 
quarrel in jest that way.” 

“I heard one account a few years ago,” said Red, 
“that may be right. There was a feller in Amarillo 

95 


96 


Tall Tales from Texas 


named Gabriel Asbury Jackson. He’d worked his self 
out of a job in Kansas and had come to Texas to buck 
the cigarette evil. One time he cornered a bunch of us 
that was too drunk to make a git-away and begun 
talkin’ to us about smokin’. 

“ 'Young men,’ he says, 'beware of cigarettes. You 
think you’re smart to smoke a sack of Bull Durham 
every day, do you? Well, look at Pecos Bill. A stalwart 
young man he was, tough as nails, a fine specimen. 
But he got to foolin’ with cigarettes. What did they 
do for him?’ he says. 'Why, nothin’ at first. But did 
he quit? No!’ he says. 'He puffed away for ninety 
years, but they finally got him. And they’ll git you, 
every mother’s son of you, if you don’t leave ’em 
alone.’ ” 

"That ain’t so,” said Joe. "That man was jest a liar. 
Cigarettes never killed Pecos Bill. He was, however, 
a great smoker, but he never smoked Bull Durham. 
He made him up a mixture of his own, the principal 
ingredients bein’ Kentucky home-spun, sulphur, and 
gun-powder. Why, he would have thought he was a 
sissy if he’d smoked Bull Durham. 

"When the matches was scerce Bill used to ride out 
into a thunderstorm and light his cigarette with a 
streak of lightnin’, and that’s no doubt what’s back of 
a tale you hear every once in a while about him bein’ 
struck and kilt. But nobody that knows how Bill 
throwed a surcingle over a streak of lightnin’ and rode 
it over Pike’s Peak will ever believe that story.” 

"I heard it was liquor that killed pore Bill,” said 
Hank. 


The Exodus of Pecos Bill 


9 7 


“Must of been boot-leg,” said Red. 

“Naw,” said Hank. “You see, Bill bein’ brought up 
as he was from tender youth on whiskey and onions, 
was still a young man when whiskey lost its kick for 
him. He got to puttin’ nitroglycerin in his drinks. That 
worked all right for a while, but soon he had to go to 
wolf-bait; and when that got so it didn’t work, he 
went to fish-hooks. Bill used to say, rather sorrowful- 
like, that that was the only way he could git an idear 
from his booze. But after about fifty years the fish¬ 
hooks rusted out his interior parts and brought pore 
Bill to an early grave.” 

“I don’t know who told you that windy,” said Joe. 
“It might of been your own daddy. But it ain’t so. It’s 
jest another damn lie concocted by them damn prohi¬ 
bition men.” 

“I heard another tale,” said Red, “which may be 
right for all I know. I heard that Bill went to Fort 
Worth one time, and there he seen a Boston man who 
had jist come to Texas with a mail-order cowboy outfit 
on; and when Bill seen him, he jist naturally laid down 
and laughed his self to death.” 

“That may be so,” said Joe, “but I doubt it. I heard 
one tale about the death of Pecos Bill that I believe is 
the real correct and true account.” 

“And what was that?” asked Lanky. 

“Well, Bill happened to drift into Cheyenne jest as 
the first rodeo was bein’ put on. Bein’ a bit curious to 
know what it was all about, he went out to the grounds 
to look the thing over. When he seen the ropers and 
the riders, he begun to weep; the first tears he’d shed 


98 


Tall Tales from Texas 


since the death of Slue-Foot Sue. Well, finally when 
a country lawyer jest three years out of Mississippi got 
up to make a speech and referred to the men on horse¬ 
back as cowboys, Bill turned white and begun to 
tremble. And then when the country lawyer went on to 
talk about ‘keepin’ inviolate the sacred traditions of the 
Old West/ Bill jest went out and crawled in a prairie- 
dog hole and died of solemncholy.” 

Lanky looked at Red and Hank. They had not 
missed the point, but they chose to ignore it. 

Joe talked on. “After several years,” he said, “when 
all Bill’s would-be rivals was sure he was dead, they 
all begun to try to ruin his reputation and defame his 
character. They said he was a hot-headed, overbearin’ 
sort of feller. They was too scered to use the word, 
even after Bill died, but what they meant was that 
he was a killer. 

“Now, Pecos Bill did kill lots of men. He never kept 
no tally his self, and I don’t suppose nobody will ever 
know jest how many he took off. Of course I’m not 
referrin’ to Mex’cans and Indians. Bill didn’t count 
them. But Bill wasn’t a bad man, and he hardly ever 
killed a man without just cause. 

“For instance, there was Big Ike that he shot for 
snorin’, that Bill’s enemies talked up so much. But 
them that was doin’ the talkin’ would forgit to mention 
that Bill had been standin’ guard over Mexico steers 
every night for six weeks and was gittin’ a bit sleepy. 

“Then there was Ris Risbone. Ris was one of these 
practical jokers, and he ramrodded an outfit that fell 
in behind Bill’s on the trail. Ris had a dozen or so 


The Exodus of Pecos Bill 


99 


jokes, and when he pulled one, he slapped his knees 
and laughed and laughed whether anybody else was 
a-laughin’ or not. One day Ris rode up to Bill’s chuck- 
wagon when there wasn’t nobody there but the cook, 
and he was asleep in the shade of the wagon with his 
head between the wheels. Ris slipped up and grabbed 
the trace chains and begun rattlin’ ’em and yellin’ 
‘Whoa! Whoa!’ The pore spick woke up thinkin’ that 
the team was runnin’ away, and that he was about to 
git his pass to Saint Peter. He jumped up and bumped 
his head on the wagon; then he wakes up and looks 
around, and there stands Ris slappin’ his knees and 
laughin’. Jest then Bill rides up, but he never said 
nothin’. 

“When the outfits got to Abilene, Bill was in the 
White Elephant with some of his men, fixin’ to take 
a drink. Jest as Bill was about to drop his fish-hooks 
in his glass, Ris poked his head in at the winder and 
yelled, ‘Fire! Fire!’—and Bill did. 

“In one killin’, however, Bill acted a bit hasty, as he 
admitted his self. One day he called Three-Fingered 
Ed out of the saloon, sayin’ he’d like to speak with 
him in private. Bill led Ed out into a back alley, and 
there they stopped. 

“ ‘Say, Ed,’ he says, lookin’ him right in the eye, 
‘didn’t you say that Mike said I was a hot-headed, over¬ 
bearin’ sort of feller?’ 

“ ‘Naw,’ says Ed, ‘You mistook me. He never said 
that.’ 

“ ‘Well, doggone,’ says Bill, ‘ain’t that too bad. I’ve 
gone and killed an innocent man.’ 


100 Tall Tales from Texas 


“Well, Lanky, maybe your pa’ll let you come back 
next fall.” 


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AUb 3 0 1334 


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